cover image Hat Tricks

Hat Tricks

Satoshi Kitamura. Peachtree, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-68263-150-8

Kitamura’s volume (The Rainmaker Danced) is an amusing peek-a-boo tale for budding magic fans. The opening ink, watercolor, and gouache image shows two ear tips peeking out of an inverted magician’s hat. “What do have here?” asks the omniscient narrator in the first of several questions that drive the book. The answer is a rabbit magician named Hattie, and with an “abracadabra, katakurico,” she pulls out of her hat, in rapid succession, a cat, a squirrel, an octopus, a moose, and an elephant (who needs help extracting his elephant-size derriere). Much of the action takes place along a single plane with no detailing—opening and closing pictures establish a proscenium stage—but the animal cast carries the show with élan. Kitamura’s snaggly black line and lovely washes of color conjure up a soft, shocked brown moose, and a nonplussed pink-orange octopus with vine-like appendages that seem to have a life of their own. Although the ending feels a little limp (a backdrop arrives, and the animals are suddenly duplicated, creating a “whole new world of friends”), the vivid characters make this much more than a one-trick story. Ages 2–6. [em](Mar.) [/em]