When We Lived in Uncle’s Hat

When I was a child, my mother took me to the library almost every week. I have great memories of those trips, the promising weight of a new stack of books, the earthy, slightly damp smell of the well-worn pages, and the large brass turtle sculpture and tree house painted on the wall (there’s always a tree house of some description to demarcate the children’s section). I’d like to say that I’ve continued the same tradition with my own children — there were some early traumatic attempts with my son when he was in his hell-raising, shelf-emptying twos. And threes. But the simple truth is that the children have hundreds of books at home, we generally seem to have more stuff than I ever had as a child and books are no exception. Some are books we’ve bought, but many have been gifts from grandparents or hand-me-downs from families with older children and we are spoiled for choice when it comes to nightly reading. Still, partly out of nostalgia, I make the effort to get them to the library on occasion and once a week during school holidays.

About two months ago, I was in the library picking up some books I’d reserved (I’m positively greedy about reserving books, which leads to weekly and sometimes more frequent trips). The children weren’t with me that day, but my oldest had taken an interest in Horrible Histories and I wanted to feed his habit and keep the reading streak going. (He was finally reading some chapter books for pleasure without my constant encouragement/nagging!) As an afterthought, I thought I should grab a few picture books for my girls. I didn’t have much time, but found myself drawn to a book with pencil drawings of a tiny family perched on the brim of a large black hat, their white laundry hanging on a line strung across the crown.   Titled When We Lived in Uncle’s Hat, the back cover told me that it was written by Swiss author Peter Stamm with illustrations by Jutta Bauer, it also said:

“There is always a story in moving house and this family has several to tell. From Uncle’s hat to Aunty’s violin, follow our family as they embark on an incredible adventure to find that elusive place called home.”

It struck a chord. We’re expats and we’ve lived far from our family for the last five years. Additionally, we moved house a few months ago and it was difficult for everyone to get settled. But there was something else tugging at me, memories of another book, one that my mother had from her own childhood — long out of print — about the necessity of having a “little house of your own.” In that book, children made clubhouses and curled up in dens made under clusters of trees or in their closets. Everyone, even children, needs a space they can call their own.  

That night, I curled up with the girls to read the book and found that it was decidedly darker than I had realized, more surreal than whimsical, but poignantly beautiful.The narrator is a member of the family, an unnamed child, who shares with the reader all the places they try to call home. They live in a house with a blue light, the bus, on the church roof (Warning — Mom decides to sunbathe in the nude on the roof), in Auntie’s violin, on the moon and in Uncle’s hat.  In total, the family live in seventeen different places, before finding that the eighteenth place is really home. There’s one page of text and one full-colour illustration for each place. Everywhere they live has some distinctive issues, for example, in the sea they try talking to fish, but the fish never reply and in the hotel they get fresh towels every day. For each location they inhabit, there is a list of random facts about what happens to different family members there: Mother watches the same film forty times in the cinema, Grandma loses her patience in Nowhere and on the moon, Father promises each of his children a third of the world. Many of the passages are surreal — they are shadow figures without substance when they live Nowhere — but some passages are stark reminders of real life. In one section, the family is forced to live under a bridge in the cold and grandfather dies.

I freely admit that I should have read the entire book before sitting down with my four and six-year-old. I was not entirely prepared for the darker elements of the book, but I still felt that I had discovered a strange treasure. It did not hold the attention of my youngest, but my six-year-old loved it and seemed to have an intuitive understanding of both the surreal and sad parts of the book. Children’s entertainment is often unnaturally tidy and sweet or slick with hipsterish cynicism. I greatly admire books and films that respect the emotional complexity of children. When We Lived in Uncle’s Hat explores what makes a home or a family — the family goes through many incarnations –and how it can be difficult to find a place that feels like home, themes that resonate no matter how old you are.

Are there any surreal and wonderful books that are favorites with your children? Where do you feel most at home?