Rembrandt, a wide-eyed teddy bear with a frog peeking out of his pocket, pauses in the park to watch a clown juggle eggs—and he loses his lucky hat to a gust of wind. So opens this satisfyingly spontaneous and quirky tale, a finely tuned collaboration between debut author Blackaby and DePalma (The Strange Egg). Mixed-media illustrations drolly depict a spirited cast of animal characters—the clown juggling the eggs, for example, is shown as a caterpillar in a frilly collar, balancing on stilts with one set of its legs. Rembrandt's laments evoke sympathy from a bird, who obligingly offers himself as a hat substitute. But the bird's feet are prickly and he doesn't stay long, wisely opting to take off when a cat appears and telling Rembrandt, "Your hat looks good enough to eat." Feeling "partly responsible" for the bear's "hat" having flown away, the cat climbs onto Rembrandt's head, but he
proves to be heavy, lumpy and fidgety. Rembrandt's dilemma seems to be solved when a rabbit escorts him to a hat shop, where he tries on an array of exotic chapeaux (which DePalma conveys in a delicious series of head shots). Alas, the one he purchases—a polka-dotted clown hat that conveniently comes with chin ribbons—isn't quite right either. Blackaby and DePalma cap this comical caper with a pleasing set of solutions. All in all, simply fedorable. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)
