I hear that Patrick Ness called this, on Twitter, the best book of the year…for adults or children.
I follow Patrick on Twitter but must have missed that one – took no notice because I didn’t know Klassen. But I’ve just found a copy of the book – kindly donated by Walker Books – in the Garden Room at Liverpool Hope University where The Reader Organisation (in the persons of Charlotte and Dave) is running a Reader-in-Residence project with the Faculty of Education.
It is very very good.
As I read I thought of all the places I’ve worked, all the people I’ve worked with, all the bad things that have happened and all crimes I might have wanted to commit…
I thought about what happens to us when we read a book – so much easier to think about with small amounts of language, as here, than say, with Middlemarch or Crime and Punishment.
Am I comparing I Want My Hat Back with Middlemarch and Crime and Punishment?
Read it and see. You don’t even need a small child.
