Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | J 391.43 CARLSON | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodburn Public Library | 338.7 CARLSON | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
When the American West was first being settled, everyone wore whatever hat was available. But John Stetson, a hatmaker who had followed his dream of going West, invented a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat that quickly became the most popular hat west of the Mississippi. This unusual biography, illustrated by Caldecott Honor winner Holly Meade, captures the little-known story of the hat that has come to symbolize the West--and the man who invented it. Full color.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-4Usually taken for granted as a symbol of the West, the Stetson hat, or "Boss of the Plains," has finally had its story told. In a picture-book format, with fictionalized conversation, Carlson weaves a lively and information-packed narrative that will have wide appeal. Tracing John Stetson's journey from his family's East Coast hat business to Pikes Peak, CO, his inspiration in creating the first "Boss of the Plains" for his own personal use, and his eventual production and marketing of the popular hat, Carlson demonstrates a storyteller's expertise in pacing, plot-building, and dialogue. The color cut-paper illustrations convey the activity and bustle of the boom-town West. Meade's scenes include women, children, Mexicans, and African Americans in a way that portrays the diversity of the West more accurately than usual, but because of this, the absence of Native Americans (except for the distant tipis on the first page) and Asian immigrants is more noticeable. A bibliography and acknowledgments at the end reveal that this entertaining picture book is indeed a well-researched work of nonfiction, appropriate for storytelling or reports.Nina Lindsay, Vista School, Albany, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This picture book, a mix of storytelling and brand-name placement, makes a legend of John Batterson Stetson and takes its title from a trademark cowboy hat. Stetson, the son of a New Jersey hatmaker, goes west in the 1850s. Although disappointed in his quest for gold, he soon finds that his family trade comes in handy. One spread shows, step-by-step, how he turns rabbit pelts into felt to make a snug tent, and later he applies the same technique to construct a broad-brimmed hat. When he returns east and resumes hatmaking, he designs the "Boss of the Plains" to guard Western heads from the "burning sunshine, drenching rain, whipping wind, or swirling snow" of the frontier. While the detailed sidebars may trip up the pacing of Carlson's (More Than Moccasins) narrative for some readers, accounts like the felt-making episode will satisfy even the most curious cowpoke. Meade (Hush!) composes busy paper, pencil and paint collages on speckled or pin-striped brown stock, suggestive of rocks, dust and Western apparel. She imagines Stetson as a grinning, rusty-bearded gent, and pictures folks of all ages trying on the signature hat. The fresh and lively art straddles East and West, adding panache to the facts. Young cowhands with a hankering for the Wild West will tip their hats to this tale. Ages 6-10. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
When hat-maker John Batterson Stetson went West as a young man in 1859, people wore any old thing on their heads. How Stetson's ungainly but perfectly adapted thick-fur felt creation became an indispensable part of Western attire is the subject of this lively picture book. Carlson's storytelling prose sets the scene and tells the tale concisely and enticingly, and Meade's mixed-media illustrations have an appropriately rough-and-ready feel. Bib. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Carlson celebrates the crowning (so to speak) achievement of John Batterson Stetson, a Philadelphia hatmaker who went West for his health in the 1850s and invented the emblematic piece of cowboy gear still identified with him, heavy enough to keep off the rain, wide enough to block the sun, tough enough to stand years of abuse--or, as some said, ""you can smell it across a room, but you just can't wear it out."" Meade surrounds this lively odyssey with a kaleidoscope of brightly painted collage cowboy scenes, taking her ruddy-bearded artisan from his boyhood home in New Jersey to the gold fields of Pikes Peak, then back East where he found his fortune at last. Carlson closes her account with a biographical note while a cowboy poet's heartfelt tribute appears on the back of the jacket. Steer readers who want to know more about Stetson, or about western fashion in general, to M. Jean Greenlaw's Ranch Dressing (1993). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 5^-9. At first, settlers and travelers in the American West wore the hats they had brought with them from back home--knit caps, straw sombreros, derbies, etc.--but in 1859 hatmaker John Batterson Stetson made himself a "big and picturesque" hat out of tough felt, with a high crown and a wide brim, to protect him from the sun and the rain in the gold hills of California. He found no gold, but when he moved back East to Philadelphia, he manufactured that big hat for the wranglers and cowboys of the West. He called the hat the Boss of the Plains and launched a world fashion. Carlson tells the story with verve, both the Wild West adventure and the fascinating details of how exactly Stetson designed and stitched that felt. Meade's colorful cut-paper collage paintings capture the rough-and-tumble clamor and excitement of the frontier and the characters who made that Stetson hat part of everything they did: "It gets so you can smell it across a room," they said, "but you just can't wear it out." --Hazel Rochman