Very Good Hats

Because I really needed another job.

I am a person who wears a lot of hats—my writer hat, my reader hat, and my bookseller hat, but also my daughter and wife and mom and sister and friend and boss and novelist and screenwriter and cheese enthusiast hats. Right now, though, I am coming to you with my very newest hat on—my picture book writer hat.

I have always loved picture books—James Marshall’s George and Martha and Kay Thompson’s Eloise make up approximately 75% of my entire personality. It has been the joy of my life to read books with them for hours every day—even now, with the glittering excitement of graphic novels and manga and chapter books, it is still picture books that we return to every night at bedtime. Carson Ellis, Mac Barnett, John Burningham….I could list my favorite picture book writers all day and never run out of names.

So you know what I did during the pandemic, before I had child care? I wrote some picture books! Right now my life philosophy is this: do more of the things you really love. So that’s what I’m doing! And my first picture book, Very Good Hats, will be published in January. Do you want to see how beautiful it is?

Blanca Gómez is one of my favorite picture book artists! Her books Bird House and Dress Up Day and her illustrations in City Moon are some of the very very best of the last decade. She is INCREDIBLE and did exactly what I always hoped would happen—she made the book a thousand times funnier and more poignant and wonderful. There is a naked butt in this book! There are clouds and leaves and cats and teapots! Truly—it is wonderful, and I am so grateful.

Very Good Hats asks the important questions in life: to quote from Jon Klassen’s seminal hat work: what is a hat? Is a cloud a hat? Is a cat a hat? Are leaves a hat? Yes!

Also, as I sit here and look around my office, I found some very good hats, and here they are.

Here’s my friend Stephin wearing a very good hat in front of an ice cream truck.

Here’s me wearing a very good hat at our wedding. I called it my head tutu.

Here’s me and Joey McIntyre in 2007—this hat had a top, unlike some of Joey’s previous hats.

And here’s my dad, just a few months ago, in one of his many, many very good hats.

Here is a preorder link that takes you to the PRH preorder site.

Here is a link that takes you to the Books Are Magic preorder site. If you order at Books Are Magic, I can personalize it for you, and there will be some swag. Swag TBD. Hat-related.