Baby book review: Hats of Faith by Medeia Cohan, illustrated by Sarah Walsh

Baby librarian Marian and her mommy Margaret review the lovely and informative board book Hats of Faith by Medeia Cohan and illustrated by Sarah Walsh.

Marian reviews Hats of Faith

You want to know what the best part of this book is? The material it’s made of! When I press my finger on the page and move it around, it makes a wonderful squealing noise. I highly recommend giving it a try. It says on the back that it’s made from “responsible sources.” I don’t know what that means, but more board books should be made from these sources. 

Every page features a face, which is also nice. I like to point at the faces, and their eyes and nose and mouths and hats, of course. Mommy will ask me to point out certain facial features, but I ignore her unless I want to point that feature out. 

Margaret reviews Hats of Faith

This time of year makes me think about how different religions celebrate winter and the solstice. There aren’t a whole lot of board books out there that look at religion and faith from a non-biased perspective. This is one of them. While the book isn’t about religious celebrations, it is about how different religions practice their faith by the headgear they wear. Each page illustrates a man or woman wearing some kind of headgear or hat. The words tell what type of headgear, how to pronounce it, and who wears it. For example, the first page says “This is a Turban (Ter-ben), which many Sikh men wear.” 

Isn’t that fantastic? I love that I get to learn something when we read this book together. 

The illustrations are both cute and beautiful, and look a little like oil paintings. As would be expected, the illustrations show a lot of diversity.

While Marian is too young for this book, it would be a great book for ages 3 and up. It not only teaches about religions, it can also teach about pronunciation symbols, so even though it’s a board book, it translates well for elementary school aged kids. Though Marian is too young for it, she enjoys the act of holding it and handling the pages, as her review shows.

We definitely recommend this book.

There’s also a website dedicated to the book, with teaching tools and suggestions.