The master of the side eye returns!
At first sight, this turtle might look familiar but this one comes packing much attitude! Change of hat or different turtle, you decide. Which is one of the reasons we love Klassen books so much after all, isn’t it?
The characters never tell us what to do yet they encouragingly stare at us, the reader, as if we have a part in the story too. Klassen has the ability to break the 4th wall but not as we’ve seen before, there is no call to action, just an invitation.
This 5 chapter story is about three animals sporting hats (of course) in a conundrum over which spot is best for standing. The minimal environment of delightfully textured foliage we love in Jon’s work is now filled with a vast sky.
The characters hilariously interact, sometimes yelling across the page in all caps.
At one point Armadillo closes his eyes and imagines the future. Is it just a dream or a true invasion? You decide.
“This medium works best when it’s most suggestive, when it gives us the freedom to walk around and fill in these things on our own. But what’s amazing about this is, given all that freedom to be on our own and make these stories personal to us alone, we end up meeting each other anyway.”
Now we patiently wait to see what Jon does next!
