Jon Klassen and his Hats

It began with hats.  Klassen won the Caldecott Medal for his book called This Is Not My Hat

When I read it to kids in the library they absolutely loved it.  We discussed the art work and the dark inference at the end of the book ( I especially like the dark inference!).  It was my first encounter with Jon Klassen.  Ever since I have been drawn to his art (and have made sure the library I work in has all of his hat books).  It's a big job, but I have been steadily working at getting the rest of Klassen's work, either his own books or the ones he has illustrated for other authors.
One example is this:

 Sam and Dave Dig a Hole was literally a rip-roaring success as a read-aloud to my grade three kids.  

I have never seen kids so successfully engaged in a story time book which had them roaring with laughter.  

The Dark was deliciously creepy and there was a wonderful discussion afterwards about how Klassen's art work really evoked those dark, scary feelings (but was really cute all at the same time).

While I'm at it, The Nest was the creepiest book I read last year.  Another future purchase for the school library, because, after all kids just can't resist the scary stuff.

My most favourite discovery to date is this wonderful book The Mysterious Howling plus the others in this series named the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place.  It had the usual M.O.,   I was drawn to the book by the art.  To my immense pleasure it was a Klassen illustrated book, written by Maryrose Wood.   The art attracted me, the story kept me hooked (more on these later).