Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1998)
Carlson celebrates the crowning (so to speak) achievement of John Batterson Stetson, a Philadelphia hatmaker who went West for his health in the 1850s and invented the emblematic piece of cowboy gear still identified with him, heavy enough to keep off the rain, wide enough to block the sun, tough enough to stand years of abuse--or, as some said, "you can smell it across a room, but you just can't wear it out." Meade surrounds this lively odyssey with a kaleidoscope of brightly painted collage cowboy scenes, taking her ruddy-bearded artisan from his boyhood home in New Jersey to the gold fields of Pikes Peak, then back East where he found his fortune at last. Carlson closes her account with a biographical note while a cowboy poet's heartfelt tribute appears on the back of the jacket. Steer readers who want to know more about Stetson, or about western fashion in general, to M. Jean Greenlaw's Ranch Dressing (1993).

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July/August 1998 (Vol. 51, No. 11))
John Stetson was a consumptive eastern hatmaker when he decided to go West in 1859, joining an expedition to Colorado. He used his hatmaker’s felting skills to make a tent and then a funny-looking but immensely useful and durable felt hat. When Stetson returned back East, he decided to market that hat, which he called “The Boss of the Plains.” The rest is, as they say, history, since the hat we now know as the Stetson became the cowboy’s reliable friend and an icon of the West. Carlson resists the temptation to be cute, but she’s clearly appreciative of this chapeau chapter of history: her brief description of the felting process is simple and lucid, and her enumeration of the many uses for a Stetson (“It shielded a cowpoke’s eyes from blinding sun and caught the rain before it trickled down his back . . . Or came in handy when the sweetest huckleberries were ready to be picked”) is quietly picturesque. Meade’s mixed-media illustrations use cut paper to give the earth-toned scenes an immediacy and grounded gaiety often missing from images of the past, but her careful employment of colored-pencil shading and watercolor highlights gives the spreads more subtlety, unity, and textural blending than pure collage sometimes displays. As well as being an enjoyable story of an American symbol, this is a compact demonstration of the lesser-sung role of entrepreneurship in westward expansion. A brief followup and bibliography cap things off. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 1998, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1998, Kroupa/DK Ink, 32p, $16.95. Grades 2-4.