What would a magic hat turn you in to? Mem Fox's fun ink and watercolor pictures show a magic hat blowing around in the wind and landing on random heads in town. The confetti and stars that trail behind the hat never let you forget that it's full of magic. Each time the hat lands, it turns that person into a different animal. The words read like a fairy tale, with rhyming couplets. However, whenever the hat lands on someone new, the final rhyme is suspended to the next page, so your child can guess which animal that person will become. The rhymes are straightforward, so it is entirely possible to guess correctly each time; "It spun through the air, From way over there, And sat on the head of a sleepy old….BEAR!" Repetition also helps your child learn the text and begin to recognize when to chime in, "Oh, the magic hat, the magic hat! It moved like this, it moved like that!" The book is physically tall, so it is fun for your little one to hold it in their laps and study the pictures filled with rainbows of color and plenty of activity.

The pictures are detailed enough with plenty of activity that children will love studying each page and losing themselves in their imagination. The wizard who appears toward the end to reclaim his hat will captivate your little one with his kaleidoscope colored rope and giant stature. You can discuss the ending with your child to decide why the wizard left the townspeople a giant spotted egg that hatched into a super-sized chicken, or what the final page meant when it showed the wizard putting on the magic hat and suddenly he's a little boy skipping away.

After reading this book with my four-year-old niece Emily she decided her dad's baseball cap would be a suitable magic hat, and she wore it around for the rest of the day. I asked her which animal she was, but she insisted her magic hat didn't work like that - it turned people in princesses instead.

--Audra