Meanwhile, the pictures show the big fish waking up and methodically, inexorably hunting the little fish down until they are both deep in the weeds, from which the big fish emerges alone. The fish is upfront with us about its theft (“This hat is not mine I just stole it”), and prattles on about just why he is going to get away with the hat and the crime (“And even if he does notice that it’s gone, he probably won’t know it was me who took it”). A plucky little fish has stolen a dapper little hat from a sleeping big fish. “This Is Not My Hat” is probably not a bedtime book.
His problem is instead one parents will readily recognize: “What happens when Little Tug tires out?” “But what about MY needs?” the little boat whines. Little Tug is “not the biggest boat in the harbor,” but he (unlike his obvious predecessor, Hardie Gramatky’s “Little Toot”) works very hard: “He pulls, he pushes and guides the boats to safety.” Rescuing a stilled tall ship, a broken speedboat and an ocean liner gone awry, Little Tug is an excellent helper.
Savage tries something different with “Little Tug,” a more disarmingly modest book for younger children than “Where’s Walrus?,” whose wordlessness and off-the-page references to Edward Hopper as well as to “Where’s Waldo?” meant inference was everything. Still, both books were strong sellers and brought deserved attention to their creators.
The deliberations are secret, so we cannot know the Caldecott committee’s thinking, but the single (if expert) joke of “Walrus” and the Raymond Carveresque minimalist murder plot of “Hat” were perhaps not pluses. Jon Klassen’s “I Want My Hat Back” and Stephen Savage’s “Where’s Walrus?,” though two of the most widely anticipated Caldecott Medal contenders of 2012, didn’t, in the end, get much love from the American Library Association committee that chose the winning picture book, “A Ball for Daisy,” by Chris Raschka, along with three runners-up.
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