Nonfiction By Steve Jenkins

Jenkins, Steve. Just a Second: A Different Way to Look At Time. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011.

Overview:

Do you really know what kinds of things can happen every second, every minute, or every hour of each day, week, month, or year? In Just a Second: A Different Way to Look at Time, you will discover interesting information regarding time such as that a rattlesnake shakes its tail 60 times and a commercial jet can cruise 800 feet in just one second. Other intervals of time are also discussed- the minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and not to mention what has happened over the last billion years. After reading In Just a Second: A Different Way to Look at Time, readers will know just how much goes on in the time it takes to read just this one sentence.

Critical Analysis:

On two-paged colorful spreads, Jenkins displays collage-style images all around and includes facts near or bordering each picture. The images stand out against the bold solid colors used on the pages. Although the images used are not real photographs, they are appealing and draw in the attention of a young audience of 6 to 10 year olds. The facts are to the point and mostly not well-known information, making this informational book easy to read aloud from beginning to end. The last page in the book notes that some facts used in the book are well established, such as the speed of light, and other facts come from a variety of sources or are estimates of those sources. The author also notes that some facts come from reasonable estimates because, for example, there is no way to know exactly how many babies are born in a year. The author’s style of writing offers readers just enough information to peak their interest, but still allows the main idea of the book, concepts of time, to be clearly understood.

Awards and Reviews:

Caldecott Award Winning Author

“Jenkins renders this package both eye-catching and mind boggling. Teachers will find good juming-off points here for math, science, and history discussions.”--School Library Journal

“This subtly philosophical examination of time, scale, and the mechanics of life is all but certain to leave readers reconsidering the world and their place in it.” --Publishers Weekly

Connections:

*Create a class book that follows the pattern of Steve Jenkins’ Just a Second that depicts how many second, minutes, etc. that it takes student to do various things.

*Do some research on the history of time.

*Read Telling Time: How to tell time on digital and analog clocks! by Jules Older