THE FAVORITE HAT

Cherished headgear spurs adventure for a pair of elephants.

Olive gifts Oscar a hat. A tan number with a black band, it immediately earns the titular description. As two friends take a trip to the beach (cut short by rain), head to the grocery store, and bake a cake, the hat reveals surprising new functions. It serves as beachwear, but it’s also an impromptu shovel, umbrella, and grocery sack. Then it falls into the cake batter! Olive, whose confident suggestions haven’t faltered all day, now announces calmly that the hat can be washed. It can’t, and Oscar sadly sports the warped-looking cap. But Oscar recognizes that a day with Olive is better even than a favorite hat. And the pals share the splendid cake. Rosenthal’s depictions of the pachyderms and their surroundings are simple and firmly outlined. Olive is stylish in a pink polka-dot dress and a two-piece bathing suit; Oscar wears bright shorts and T-shirts. Olive’s large-type, serif-text dialogue is foregrounded in peach, Oscar’s in orange. Bernstein wrings maximum meaning out of a strict economy of text, resulting in a tale simple enough for youngsters to read independently but still satisfying. In few words, each friend is deftly characterized: Oscar is a bit slow on the uptake (asking where the hat is while wearing it) but at the end turns out to be perceptive and sweet. Olive is supportive and managerial.

A friendship tale that deserves to leap immediately to the beginning-reader classics shelf.