It's About Time: Untangling Everything You Need to Know About Time

K-Gr 2—This book fails to clarify the keeping of time, and, in fact, creates more confusion about the concept. The units of measurement comprising this topic are specific, but the author explains them in ways that are imprecise: "Every year you get one year older." Estellon uses the baking of a pound cake to show the length of an hour, but the recipe calls for a cooking time of 45 minutes in the oven. Presumably that leaves 15 minutes for preparation, but this is not explicitly stated. Estellon also writes that a clock is a child's guide but then launches into a head-scratching list of "feelings" that supposedly divide a day, such as "If you start to feel hungry, it must be time to eat" and "If you feel tired, it must be bedtime." Kids won't understand "If you are full of beans, it must be time to go out and play." Estellon covers a lot of ground by running helter-skelter over it, and the clutter of the book is compounded by unhelpful material like the "Monday's Child" poem, for which no explanation is given. An unsuccessful effort.—Alyson Low, Fayetteville Public Library, AR