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oh here’s a winter thing! “We Found A Hat” went through a lot of versions before the turtle one & one of them was about penguin...things? Who find a hat in the snow. Here is a thread of the roughs for that version, if you want.
I wasn’t wild about how the writing sounded in this version. There was a lot of dead air & the repetition sounded off & not funny, I didn’t think.
Also they decide they don’t want a hat if the other can’t have it and that seemed unearned and convenient. In the turtle version it’s stated more philosophically and less of a personal thing.
The page about “it is snowing a lot” I hated so much, but I needed to bring attention that, as you’ll see. Really hated it though.
this reuse of the same joke didn’t really work either :(
I didn’t hate the writing in the last few pages, even though it still sounds weird. These guys just never really breathed on their own.
I thought the ending was visually fun, especially ending on a white spread, but I didn’t like that the book potentially killed these guys. In the other books if people die it’s morally dubious / an overreaction, but this seemed too dark or something. THE END
What I really wanted for the third book was for nobody to get the hat & I thought for ages that that meant mass death for everyone, but instead what it became was something I was a lot happier with (though, I think, still pretty dark IMO!)
(Also a vague inspiration for this version was a Canadian short story called “The Painted Door” that seemed like required reading for a certain age of student. @beatonna knows what I mean. I did this drawing about that story like 1000 years ago )
