Whole masters theses will be written about Jon Klassen's Hat trilogy, if they haven't been already. Here, of course, we can look only at this one book, since the actual Caldecott committee is not allowed to consider an illustrator's previous work in its deliberations.

We Found a Hat is a morality play in which (this time!) friendship and goodness and life triumph over avarice and loneliness and death. But not before a massive moral struggle within the heart of one of the two tortoise characters — the one sorely tempted by the hat sitting in the middle of the desert. (Klassen differentiates his two tortoises via the markings on their shells, but it's almost unnecessary — we know each character by his or her relationship to the hat.) The tortoise who covets the hat lies; he sneaks. When his friend asks, "What are you thinking about?" he lies and says, "Nothing." As his friend is serenely heading off to dreamland, he sneaks back toward the hat, tortured by his avarice/desire. He is on the very edge of betrayal, all for the sake of the hat. What saves the first tortoise (and I love this!) is the second tortoise's STORY — a story of what she is dreaming about, a story in which there are two hats and they each get one. The power of her story literally turns the first tortoise around, away from the hat, back to his dreaming friend's side, back to their friendship — and into a dream in which, indeed, they each have a hat.

Of course, the above is my interpretation of what happens. I see the book as having a happy, and closed, ending, where the two friends have found their way past the crisis and in the morning will continue on their journey together, walking away from the divisive hat without a backward glance. But others might decide that in the morning the dream solution will disappear and the hat — and the obsession with it — will still be there. This is Jon Klassen; we can't assume anything. But myself, I find the book hopeful, and quite moving and profound in that hopefulness.

The art matches the tone and content of the text perfectly. The palette is one of the most subtle and yet most effective in any picture book I've seen this year. Look how it deepens from the bright white-gray of an afternoon in the desert ("Part One: Finding the Hat") toward peaches and browns as the sun sets ("Part Two: Watching the Sunset") and then twilight colors (beginning on the page where the first tortoise tells his lie). "Part Three: Going to Sleep" takes place entirely at night — the stars are already out — but it's a gray sort of night. True, deep black occurs only when we are inside the dream. The final image in the book — a double-page spread of a starry night sky with the two tortoises, both in hats, flying up and out of the book — gives me chills.

Klassen uses very little detail here, and he doesn't need it. A few rocks and cacti and the setting sun — and of course the big white hat sitting incongruously in the middle of the desert — are all he needs to set the scene. Viewers' focus is thus on that remarkable palette and on the two characters, especially their (wait for it) EYES. At the end of Part One, when the second, untempted tortoise tells the first tortoise, "There is only one thing to do. We must leave the hat here and forget that we found it," we need only to look where the first one's eyes are tracking to know that it won't be that simple. Almost the same situation — and illustration — and tell-tale eyes on tortoise #1— concludes Part Two.

What elements would you like to talk about in We Found a Hat? That elegantly simple setting sun? the gradations of the palette? the fact that the hat is actually ridiculously too-big for the tortoises? (Hats that don't fit are a Klassen trademark, of course.) There is more to this book than meets the eye, and plenty to discuss around the Caldecott table.