Last year the Pink Hat Marches occurred. There were many ways of telling children about it. One of them was The Pink Hat by Andrew Joyner. The way he does it is by taking a pink hat made by a special lady, and this hat goes on an interesting journey before it ends up in a very special march. (And if you look closely you will see how that hat has come full circle).
The fact the story is the journey of the hat and how it gets to the little girl of the story is refreshing. The little girl does not see injustice and tells us she has to do something, she just does it. Like the journey we all take, we just get to “the point” in our lives where “something” happens. The fact it was a Civil Rights March is not the point. The point is, there is a journey to take. This point probably will be lost on a small child directly. Indirectly, they will like the story of watching the hat take its journey from being played with by a cat, dog, baby and finally the girl. They will see a dog being a dog. They will see a girl being a girl. The message is subtler to them. The adult reading will see that deeper message.
Perhaps what touches me most is the lack of color. The only colors are black and white and the pink of the hat. Or the pink of the trail the hat takes (think Family Circus child taking one of their routes). Over all, this book is good. It is just not catching my fancy in the way I had hoped.