Shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2010
This gloriously imaginative story is all about the power of believing. Millie longs for a glorious hat but she hasn’t got any money. Cleverly, the kind man in the shop persuades her to imagine a wondrous and unusual hat which she carefully carries home. As she goes along, Millie thinks of all the amazing things her hat could look like and so ends up with the most fantastic creation imaginable. Satoshi Kitamura’s illustrations are a treat.
CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal SHORTLIST 2010: Judges’ comments
The strength of this impressive book, with its nice twist on the Emperor’s New Clothes story lies in the way that the illustrator visualises the little girl’s imagination in Kandinsky-esque explosions of colour. The hats are fabulous and the peacock breathtaking. A joyful and uplifting picture book.
Millie loves hats, but she can't afford to buy any of the beautiful ones in the hat shop. But the shopkeeper has an idea. He produces a box containing an amazing hat with the most perfect shape and color imaginable-if Millie dares to imagine it. Millie does dare, and soon she sees not only her own marvellous hat, but everyone else's hats as well.
Kitamura is one of the world's most original and stylish children's illustrators Sunday Times
Few artists are able to bring the creative force of imagination to life with such verve and vim as Satoshi Kitamura. Vibrant, colourful and pleasingly stylised, this is a wonderful life-affirming story told in an unsentimental style. Gently comedic, its overarching message regarding internal riches lends the book a fairytale feel. The Bookseller
This book takes you on a sunny walk through streets, parks and interiors, and leads you to emphathise, to learn that you might affect other people's moods and to appreciate individuality. The Sunday Times
Author
About Satoshi Kitamura
Satoshi Kitamura was born in 1956 in Tokyo. He says that when he was young he read comics and admits that these have had a great influence on his style. He says he was also influenced by anything visual from a tin of sardines to the fine art of the East and the West. He was not trained as an artist, but at the age of 19 began to do commercial work. From 1976-1979 he worked as a commercial artist in Japan, working as an illustrator for adverts and magazines. He moved to London in 1979 and worked mainly at designing greeting cards. He started illustrating for Andersen Press in 1981 after he had an exhibition of his work at the Neal Street Gallery in Covent Garden.
