Sean E. Avery, Frank’s Red Hat, Walker Books Australia, October 2022, 32 pp., RRP $25.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760654283
Frank is a rather endearing penguin – or at least he is endearing to the reader. The other penguins in the story find him challenging and even a little frightening. Frank is an ideas penguin; sometimes his ideas work but often they don’t. Frank’s is a monochromatic world of shades of black, white, and grey so when he makes himself a hat, more particularly a red hat, the other penguins are puzzled and frightened. Frank goes on making hats despite this and eventually finds that the seals that share the ice floes with the penguins love the hats. Frank then invents something else that might help to keep out the cold though once again the penguins don’t join in the admiration for this new idea. However, Frank finds that some other denizens of the icy world do like his hats, and he makes new friends this way.
The illustrations, like Frank’s world, are predominantly shades of grey and black and white, allowing Frank’s red hat to be highlighted. A disaster that befalls one brave penguin who tries on the red hat, isolates Frank still further. He is shown standing alone on an ice flow while the others have retreated to nearby ice bergs. Double-page spreads are often used to emphasise the vastness of the landscape in which the penguins live. One double-page spread is used to reveal to the reader (and indeed to Frank) how welcome his hats have been to the other group of inhabitants who are shown proudly wearing an array of brightly-coloured hats. The endpapers show all sorts of hats in red against a white background.
This is a charming book which, while not being at all didactic, has messages about accepting change (or rejecting it), fear of the new and the negative reception that innovators sometimes get from one group while being accepted – and indeed welcomed – by another.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
