The Many Hats of Louie the Rat

This aspirational tale of a rat named Louie shows us once again that the struggle to be creative has its ups and downs. Our hero, the king of reusing and recycling, takes “not-so-useful things” and makes them into something useful. The shell of a broken guitar can be a bookshelf, an empty bottle becomes a lamp base, and that planter on the wall? It seems to be made from a cheese grater. The other rats in Louie’s town are dismissive of his efforts, especially the more far-fetched ones which are clear failures.

One day while Louie is busy making something, he notices a shadow pass his window. Looking out into the street, he sees a rat wearing an enormous cylindrical hat. Then he notices more unusual hats on more rodent heads.

Everywhere he looked, Louise saw rats wearing fancy
hats. The other rats thought their hats were smart and
stylish. But not Louie…
Louie thought their hats were NOT useful.

Louie sets out to make some useful hats, for example one that will provide warmth, and one to cover up a bad hair day. They are useful, but they clearly do not appear stylish enough for his fellow rats, and so Louie ends up giving them away to a small number of grateful recipients.
Then comes the turnaround.

Word spread and soon all the other rats were
throwing away their not-so-useful hats.
They wanted one of Louie’s useful hats instead.
His business grew and grew.

Naturally all of the not-so-useful hats that had been collected in Louie’s recycling box have to come into play somewhere. There is a heavy rainstorm that floods the rat town, and, in a rather abrupt ending to the story, Louie fashions those hats into an ark that carries the rats to safety.
All of the pointy-nosed rats in the book walk on two feet and enjoy human pursuits like outdoor dining and riding bicycles. There is much amusing detail in the illustrations in which rat figures are rendered in cut-outs pasted onto soft coloured pencil grounds. My favourite images are those of Louie hard at it in his workshop with all the things he has collected piled around.

Although the pictures in The Many Hats of Louie the Rat are pleasant, the story is a bit shaky in its premise. Firstly, some of the “not-so-useful things” – rubber tires, that old cheese grater – seem perfectly useful to me, if perhaps near the end of their normal lives. Then we have the issue of artistic form over function with the hats. Surely something pleasing like a hat bedecked with feathers or ribbons should not always be dismissed in favour of a woolly beanie that keeps out the chill. The sudden change of heart among the other rats to embrace Louie’s useful creations seems forced into the narrative.

The book is the writing debut of Indian-born, Vancouver-based artist Mangal. She has illustrated a number of books for other writers (Seed School, by Joan Holub; The Brave Fawn, by Wafaa El-Tawil). I feel that her first effort at providing her own text for her art is less than completely successful. The Many Hats of Louie the Rat is a very additional purchase for library picture book collections.