I’m Over Being Alone.

Mr. Brown's Fantastic Hat
Written & Illustrated by Ayano Imai
Age Level: 3-7 Years
Published September 1, 2014

I might start talking to myself.

This book found me at the perfect moment. Paring back our activities, limiting our contact with others, that familiar feeling crept back in: loneliness. Prepare to connect with this book and also be uplifted by its warm themes of friendship and renewal.

Mr. Brown, a formidable brown bear with a penchant for top hats, lives alone. But underneath his staunch independence lies a deep loneliness. One day while Mr. Brown is napping, a woodpecker taps a hole in the bear’s hat and takes up residence. He finds the hat so delightful that he creates more holes and invites his friends to join him! At first Mr. Brown is horrified, but after a short while he comes to love the constant companionship and the music of chirping that follows him wherever he goes. Then one cold autumn morning, Mr. Brown approaches his hat holding a mugful of birdseed for breakfast, only to find it empty with the holes secured tightly shut. As the days grow shorter and colder, Mr. Brown succumbs to exhaustion and curls up to hibernate. When he wakes, spring has come and the birds have returned.

“ ‘I’m not worried at all about them,’ he said, looking out his window each day.”

Author-illustrator Ayano Imai uses spare, elegant prose to tell this story with beautiful simplicity. I find that her economy with words leaves room for her illustrations to shine with their enchanting, Surrealist beauty: the herringbone wood floors in Mr. Brown’s home melt into a carpet of grass, letters spill off the pages of a book discarded in sleep. Reading this book is an escape, and you’ll emerge feeling much like Mr. Brown: hopeful for new beginnings and grateful for friends.