Noah's book review: I want my hat back - by Jon Klassen

The premise for this epochal story is simple and told on page one: "My hat is gone. I want it back." The protagonist, a bear, whose name we never learn, sets the scene. The power in the simplicity of the two opening simple sentences is telling. This is a character who knows what he wants and we get the sense that he will do anything to get it back.

As the story goes, the bear confronts a number of different characters and asks for any details that may reunite him with his hat. With each character he meets and each negative response he gets, the audience is invited to share in his ever-spiralling despair. Despite this, we are shown a warm and selfless side to the main character. A tortoise, who cannot help him with any clues about his hat's whereabouts, we learn, has, "Been trying to climb [a] rock" all day. Seeing an opportunity to aid the stranger, he immediately offers to lift him on top of the rock. Klassen has not missed a trick here. His protagonist had, up to this point, been proven to be rather two dimensional. This act of kindness develops the bear into a more complicated, three dimensional character. There is more than meets the eye to this bear and, as a reader, you can't get through the pages fast enough to learn more about him. What else motivates this guy? What pushes his buttons?

The bear reaches breaking point and when all seems lost, the deer is a beacon of light and wisdom, encouraging the bear to solve the mystery of the missing hat himself. Klassen's deer is to the bear what Obi-wan Kanobe was to Luke Skywalker, and I dare say, in time, he could become just as iconic.

Without giving too much of the roller-coaster plot line away, I will say that the surprise of the plot twist will hit you like a freight train. You will, I guarantee, be left wide mouthed and breathless at the climax and conclusion to this tale.

The verdict: it makes it onto Noah's Ark: 5 stars. A rip-roaring story that you simply have to have on your bookshelf. I make my mummy and daddy read it to me dead loads.