Each week we look at a collection of a few books on a topic. You can explore the books on your own, or use them as a foundation for building a display in your library!
Whether you are dreading the sound of your alarm clock or wishing the hours of the day would slow down while you’re on vacation, telling time is an interesting business. Here are some books on the subject:
“Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that “the longitude problem” was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.”
“A lyrical multicultural picture book that introduces the concept of time zones.
As one little boy is eating breakfast in San Francisco, another kid in London is playing football with his mates, a girl in Harare is eating dinner with her family, and another child in Sydney is calling for a drink of water in the middle of the night. Poetic language and charming vignettes simplify the concept of time zones by providing glimpses into the everyday lives of children around the world.”
“The setting is a remote mid-nineteenth-century town in England and its grand cathedral. The cathedral Dean, Adam Ayscough, holds a deep love for his parishioners and townspeople, but he is held captive by an irrational shyness and intimidating manner. The Dean and Isaac Peabody, an obscure watchmaker who does not think he or God have anything in common, strike up an unlikely friendship.”
“There was a time when time itself was undefined—no one knew the difference between a minute, an hour, or a day. Then people started creating tools to measure time. First they used the big stuff around them—the sun, the moon, water. Soon after, using the knowledge they got from their natural time-telling tools, people began to build clocks—huge clocks unlike the ones we use today. They also used their knowledge of the sun and moon to create calendars made up of months and years.
Now, centuries later, we have clocks all around us.”
“How can anyone describe this book? It isn’t a parable, a fairy story, or a poem, but rather a mixture of all three. It is beautiful and it is comic. It is philosophical and it is cheery.”
