In Traci Strahlendorf’s book COOL HAT TRICK KILPATRICK, Kilpatrick is a kangaroo who lives in a “town” called Zoo and discovers one day that he and his mother are to move to a new town. Apprehensive, Kilpatrick goes to school in his new neighborhood and is forced to endure the chiding of his new animal classmates. Alone at recess, Kilpatrick absentmindedly throws his cap in the air and catches it on his head—a “cool hat trick” that unexpectedly endears him to the very animals who were making fun of him earlier. “Cool Hat Trick Kilpatrick” soon comes up with a variety of rhyming compliments for his new friends. The picture book is straightforwardly formatted, and the visuals are vibrant and appropriate for, say, the 6-9 age group.
That said, there is an odd incongruity in the story’s telling. It is true that literature for young children differs substantially in its content from literature for older children, but motive and causality are always still in operation. Things can happen for no reason in stories, of course, and it is true that children can pick on other children for the most arbitrary and trivial reasons; but the laughter at Kilpatrick’s expense in class has no obvious source other than the fact that he just moved here. Thus, the payoff after Kilpatrick finds himself accepted seems a little artificial. The contrivance of naming Kilpatrick’s hometown “Zoo” also has no apparent meaning. Alert young readers may spend the book’s opening pages thinking Kilpatrick lives in a zoo and wondering if the story will eventually bring him back to the wild.
However, COOL HAT TRICK KILPATRICK gets a lot more right than wrong. The moral of the story—so often incorporated into books of this sort in heavy-handed fashion—is not overdone. In its foregrounding of the simple business of being kind without the expectation of getting something in return, it conveys an important lesson for children to learn in an increasingly me-first world.
Traci Strahlendorf’s COOL HAT TRICK KILPATRICK is a picture book for young children that successfully tackles issues of self-esteem and kindness.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader