Hats!
With books to share with your kids, easy ways to play together, links to spark your own grown-up curiosity, and a printable Discovery & Play Guide.
Fort Bramble turns one year old this month! Which is totally bananas because I swear I just started sending out guides like four days ago. Time’s weird like that.
Anyway, a birthday seems like a good time to try something new, especially something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. In the spirit of slowing down, simplifying, and minimizing distractions, the guides will be designed and formatted for printing. No need to have your phone out when you’re doing one of the activities, or trying to read one of the poems at snack time. But because this is the future, they’ll have QR codes so it will be easy to share awesome songs and videos with your kids.
Fret not! If the thought of interacting with a printer makes you want to go full Office Space, the PDFs will still have links to books and videos that you can use on your phone or tablet, no printer required.
Onward!
Quotable
“Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.” —Catherynne M. Valente, from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
When’s the last time you wore a hat? In winter I wear a knit hat to keep my ears warm, and in warm weather I’ll wear a baseball cap to keep the sun out of my face, but I don't know the last time I wore a hat purely for the sake of style - maybe for my tea party birthday when I turned eight? Well, this Discovery & Play Guide makes me want to wear more hats, that’s for sure.
Hats have so many personalities, and have played so many roles across cultures and history. They range from traditional to avant-garde, from useful to frivolous. Sometimes even magical! They can signify a person's status (royalty) or job (pilot); they can even stand as a symbol for a specific person (Abraham Lincoln).
This guide is full of books and activities to explore and play - so hold on to your hats and have fun!
What you’ll find in the Hats! Guide:
Hat Books to Read Together
Snack Time: Cookie Hats
Two Hat Poems
New Ways to Play With Hats
Four Hat Videos
Invitation to Play: Make a Fancy Hat
Invitation to Play: Hat Doodles
The Fort Bramble Hats! Badge
Download the guide below for all the goodies!
To celebrate Fort Bramble’s birthday, I’m doing things a little differently this year. Guides will be available to all subscribers for 1 month after they come out, and then they’ll go into the archive which is only available to paid subscribers.
If you enjoy them, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to paid and helping to support this work and to keep Fort Bramble ad-free.
10 books about hats to read with your kids.
You might be surprised at just how many picture books there are about hats. Hats! I know! I think I read them all. Most of them for sure. Here are the ten that I loved best and was most excited to share with my kids, and with you and your kids, too.
Happy Birthday Madame Chapeau by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts
A Three Hat Day by Laura Geringer, illustrated by Arnold Lobel
Jennie’s Hat by Ezra Jack Keats
I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
Harold Loves His Woolly Hat by Vern Kousky
Carol and the Pickle Toad by Esmé Shapiro
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
Tiara’s Hat Parade by Kelly Starling Lyons, illustrated by Nicole Tadgell
A Hat for Minerva Louise by Janet M. Stoeke
Very Good Hats by Emma Straub, illustrated by Blanca Monroe Gómez
I’ve linked to Amazon for the sake of convenience, but I love AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, and eBay for finding used copies of books. And of course nothing beats your local public library.
A hat poem.
from “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat”
by Edward Lear
On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat.
For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,
With ribbons and bibbons on every side
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,
So that nobody ever could see the face
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.Four hat videos to watch together.
➵ “Hats” from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (full episode, 28 minutes) This whole episode is about hats, but my favorite bit is the very beginning when Mister Rogers shares a three-sided hat and a song about it.
➵ “The Making of a Legend: Cowboy Hats” (3 minutes) See how a classic Stetson cowboy hat gets made from start to finish.
➵ “The Milliner” (5 minutes) This charming video looks at all different kinds of hats in a delightfully playful way. I could watch it on repeat!
➵ “How to Make a Paper Hat” (1 minute) A simple and clear tutorial for two types of paper hats.
Interesting things for grown-ups to read, watch, or listen to.
To spark your own grown-up wonder, here are some fun and/or interesting things I came across as I researched and created this guide.
➵ When Going Out Without a Hat Was Grounds for Scandal (Atlas Obscura) “For certain women of a certain time not all that long ago, appearing in public without a hat was an act of brazen impropriety.”
➵ Mae Reeves made incredible hats - some were even called “showstoppers” - and her Philadelphia millinery shop has been recreated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. (Smithsonian)
➵ Hat-Wearers from Decades Past (National Geographic) “Our fascination with hats dates back several millennia. One of the earliest images of the accessory can be found in the tomb of Thebes in Egypt, where people are depicted wearing cone-like straw hats...”
➵ A Good Weekend For Hats (NPR) “What do the Coronation and the Kentucky Derby have in common, other than falling on the same day? Hats! Fashionable, fascinating, and sometimes freaky.”
➵ A fabulously fun round-up of the best fascinators in modern royal history (from 2018, so definitely due for an update).
➵ Old episodes of Radiolab are one of the best things out there. This one is called “Contagious Ideas” and starting at minute 19:00, there’s a segment about the origin and history of the cowboy hat. (The first 19 minutes are about the origin of the high five which is also a fun listen.)
Quotable
“Anyone can go by horse or rail, but the absolute best way to travel is by hat.” —Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland (2010)
I hope you loved the Hats! guide! For more Discovery & Play Guides, click this green button to find the full archive.
Adios, cinnamon toast!
Love, Kathryn