Customer Reviews

Madeline and the Bad Hat [With Cassette]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Although my daughter and I love Madeline, this particular book was disturbing. Miss Clavel buys Pepito some tools to give him "an outlet for his energy" and he builds a guillotine to decapitate chickens! He turns a cat loose in the midst of a pack of dogs and is then attacked by the dogs, resulting in a visit from the doctor. In the end, of course, Pepito changes his ways. But it in no way compensated for the fact that the majority of the story was, at best, dark. I don't tend to be faint of heart when it comes to literature, but this was not appropriate for my 4-year-old.

My daughter and I really loved this book! The rhythm of this Madeline book is especially good. It highlights Madeline's courageous, assertive personality as well as her compassionate intuition! A great match with the Madeline movie with Hatty Jones with follows a similiar plot line and is also a family favorite. Enjoy!

The third book in the "Madeline" series, this focusses on the wild behavior of Pepito, a troublemaking boy who is meant to be a foil for the mischievous Madeline. The behavior shown is pretty excessive, though: Bemelmans shows the boy tying a cat up in a pillowcase and releasing it into a pack of dogs, which strikes me a way too violent. Certainly not appropriate for smaller (toddler) readers. Even if you liked the other Madeline books, you might want to think twice before picking this one up. It's a little scary.

This is my least favorite of the Madeline series actually written by the original author. While full of fun rhymes, the book doesn't particularly hang together - plot sacrificed to rhyme. Did i really want to explain a guillotine to a 4-year-old?

Pepito, the boy in this book has a change of heart and goes from being unkind to animals to caring for them. It is a good story. As far as it being "dark" as another reviewer said,well,does that reader eat chickens? That's what Pepito was doing before he learned a new way to live with the animals he came to love.

While I've generally enjoyed the Madeline series, this story was uncharacteristically and excessively harsh. What adult wants to have to explain a guillotine to a 4-year old child?

The original Madeline is charming, well written, fun for kids of any age. The Bad Hat is none of those things.

Other reviewers have commented on the negativity and preschool-unfriendly content, like decapitation. I'm actually not a parent who tries to shelter my 3- and 5-year old from too many things, but even I have to agree there's nothing to recommend this for younger kids.

That's not the reason for my 1-star review though; for older kids the content wouldn't be an issue. I just find the poetry to be yucky to read. It doesn't scan, and the rhymes aren't particularly good. Perhaps I'm spoiled by Dr. Seuss, or even by the first Madeline book; but I prefer good poetry to bad, and imho this is just bad.

The other books are good, but this one is truly entertaining. In the hands of most authors, a character like Pepito would be a failure. He skates and bikes dangerously, captures animals, builds a guillotine to help his chef with the chickens, tries to feed a cat to hungry dogs, and in an act of redemption, releases half a zoo from their cages. But this author pulls it off delightfully. It's not even remotely disturbing, because it's all so ridiculous, and is, in any case, wound up quite neatly. Pepito is a terrific foil to the twelve little girls, and story is tight and witty.

I'm surprised this book isn't better known, given the popularity of the original Madeline book. The message of the story was ahead of its time. My family enjoyed this book much more than "Madeline's Rescue".

The only other Madeline book that I had read besides "Madeline" was "Madeline's Rescue," although I knew there were other books out there about Ludwig Bemelmans' precocious young girl who lived in an old house in Paris that was covered with vines. So reading "Madeline and the Bad Hat" was a new experience. Still, I have no explanation for why I did not recognize the idiom of "a bad hat" as a colloquialism for an unscrupulous person, even though I feel like I should.

In "Madeline and the Bad Hat," the Spanish Ambassador moves into the house next door to where Miss Clavel and the twelve little girls in two straight lines live. Miss Clavel is excited to see that His Excellency has a boy, but Madeline knows as soon as she sees him that this little boy is a Bad Hat and his actions prove her right. We know that boys will be boys, but apparently that means being mean, at least for Pepito (which we eventually discover is the young boy's name). Miss Clavel finally decides that the boy needs an outlet for his energy, and so she gets him a chest of tools, thinking that "might be attractive, For a little boy that's very active." But Pepito reduces Madeline and the other little girls to tears by building himself a guillotine and while we do not actually see it in action the device is clearly used to cut the heads off of the chickens the cook is preparing for dinner.

Pepito clearly deserves a comeuppance and what is surprising is not that he gets one, but that it is rather painful. One day while Miss Clavel and the twelve little girls are out for a walk, they spot Pepito carrying a bulging sack. They follow him and discover that all of the dogs in the neighborhood are following him as well, because of what is in the sack. Now, the key educational part of this book, besides the illustrations showing interesting parts of Paris, is that we learn that you have to cry "AU SECOURS" if by any chance you are ever in need of help in France. That means that once again Miss Clavel has to run fast and faster.

What happens is a transforming event, turning the former Barbarian into a Vegetarian. Bemelmans turns everything around so that young readers can clearly see the differences in Pepito before and after. There are three times as many full color illustrations in this 1956 story as there was in the original "Madeline," mainly because Bemelmans uses the artwork to depict scenes other than the characters out and about in Paris. I wish I could figure out the logic to why some art is mostly yellow and others are full color, but so far nothing makes sense. As always, the childlike illustrations are so captivating because Bemelmans' art always seems like advanced scribbling. My only complaint is that Madeline takes a back seat to Pepito in this story. She comments on his behavior, but does not actively participate in his reformation. But we have to wait for her next outing, "Madeline's Rescue," to be back on more appropriate ground.