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JUST A SECOND


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jenkins, Steve. 2011. Just a second New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. ISBN 978-0-618-70896-0

PLOT SUMMARY
What can happen in a second? A minute? An hour? A day, week, month or year? What about less than a second or more than a million years? Filled with quirky facts and bold illustrations, Steve Jenkins explores timely questions in JUST A SECOND: A DIFFERENT WAY TO LOOK AT TIME.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The first thing I noticed, as I read, was the page color. As the time markers change, the background colors change. The book begins with the second, which is illustrated against a royal blue background. This builds to the minute, which is against a teal background. As time progresses, the background changes. This change is a subtle reminder to the reader that the main idea of the page is also changing.

For each time marker, Steve Jenkins chooses attention-grabbing facts to hook the young reader. 
“In one second, a rattlesnake shakes its tail in warning 60 times.”

“In one minute, a child’s heart beats about 100 times.”

“In one week, a giant pumpkin can gain 150 pounds (68 kilograms).”

The time progresses logically, from second through to year. After the year, Jenkins addresses very quick (less than a second) and very long (hundreds to millions of years). With such a clear organizational pattern, the young reader can better grasp the abstract concept of time passage. 

As an illustrator, Steve Jenkins uses torn- and cut-paper collage. Because the backgrounds are solid, bold colors, the paper collages pop from the page. The layout has the text lying close to the collage, forming an image-caption relationship as a text feature to introduce to kids. Taking it one step further with some images, Jenkins follows the outline of the shape with the text, so the vulture’s caption rides its wing and the black mamba’s information slithers alongside this snake’s attention-grabbing fact: it can slither 24 feet in one-second!

At the end of the book, there are three graphic reference aids to deepen the reader’s understanding of time. These include A History of the Universe, which is formatted to imitate the spiraling formation of the Milky Way galaxy. There is also Earth’s Human Population: 1750 to 2050, which explodes as a bar graph from left to right, representing the exponential curve growth of humanity. Finally, there is a Life Spans: How Long Do Plants and Animals Live? timeline which compares the variant life cycle of species on Earth.

On the final page, Steve Jenkins clarifies his research for the book. He explains the need to estimate times and the verification of information from multiple sources. He also includes The History of Time and Timekeeping: Some Important Dates. It seems fitting to wrap up a book about time with a timeline about time!

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

BOOK LIST: “The back matter regarding the history of the universe, Earth's population, and the life span of species is pretty staggering.”

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: “This is an entertaining and thought-provoking book about units of time, which may not seem like particularly captivating material until one tries to imagine a bumblebee's wings beating 200 times per second or a person standing at the equator traveling 18 miles in one minute as Earth rotates. Pretty cool, huh?”

CONNECTIONS
  • Have kids predict, and then perform, various time activities. For instance, how many jumping jacks can they do in one minute? Or how long can they jump rope without missing? After they complete the projects, have them graph the results in a bar graph.
  • Complete a cut-paper art project. Have kids research an interesting time fact of their own and then create a page to mimic a design in the book. The child can create a cut-paper figure and design a text layout for their own art. It would be especially fun for them to create the image and text around their own interesting time fact, like how many jumping jacks they complete in a minute.
  • Kids can create their own spiral timeline for the periods of their life, with the day they were born serving as the center of the spiral.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 8, 2012 at 2:07 PM

    Hi Irene,

    I like the way you used text evidence to back up your claims. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that. :) I enjoyed reading your blog. You will be an amazing librarian!

    Linzy

    ReplyDelete

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