Spring Forward! 6 Splendid Books About Clocks and Telling Time

Time Zones, by David A. Adler and Edward Miller
This book provides a wonderful introduction to time zones, why they were established, and how they work with bright, clear graphic illustrations featuring an explorer in a space ship. Learn about how in the 1700’s, each town in America had an official clock set to noon at the time when local officials judged the sun to be directly overhead. With the advent of train travel in the 1800s, something had to be done about the patchwork of times among different towns, and the railroad companies set the standard zones. Learn all about meridians, the varying shape of time zones to keep metro areas or even whole countries on the same hour, and the theory behind daylight saving time in this clear, informative book.

When It’s Six O’Clock in San Francisco: A Trip Through Time Zones, by Cynthia Jaynes Omololu and Randy DuBurke
The author of this book is a mom who had trouble answering her kids’ questions about time zones, until she wrote them through this story. As the book opens, young Jared wakes up in San Francisco at 6 a.m. The time stays constant in San Francisco while you flip the pages and move eastward, meeting kids around the world, including Geneviève in Montreal (9 a.m.), Nkosi in Cape Town (4 p.m.), and Min-Yue in Beijing (10 p.m.).

Around the Clock, by Roz Chast
Adults will recognize Roz Chast as the long-standing cartoonist for the New Yorker, famous for characters that are neurotic, chronically worried, or cluelessly oblivious. Kids are in for a treat with Chast’s illustrations that depict children getting up to mischief at every hour of the day, with a deadpan, rhyming text. It begins with “From 6 to 7, Pete is up, drinking from his favorite cup,” which sounds innocuous enough, but the picture shows that Pete has torn apart the kitchen, scattering flour, various syrups, frozen waffles and cereal across the floor, leaving the refrigerator open, a watermelon leaking down the counter and the toaster in flames. Other illustrations depict some classics of kid mischief, including dropping marbles down the drain, daydreaming in class, digging holes in the yard and more.

Ticktock Banneker’s Clock, by Shana Keller and David C. Gardner
Benjamin Banneker was an African-American farmer and inventor born free in 1731 in Maryland. As he grew up on his parents’ farm, he gained a reputation for his cleverness, especially in math and with mechanical things. One day, a neighbor in town loaned him a pocket watch, sure Benjamin could figure out how it worked. This book depicts Benjamin engaging in classic inventor persistence as he takes apart the watch, diagrams it, decides to build his own clock, and fights various obstacles—including the high price of metal and the fragility of wood—as he constructs his clock over the course of two years.

The Noisy Clock Shop, by Jean Horton Berg and Art Seiden
This charming book, originally published in 1950, will take you and your kids back to the pre-digital era and the quaint clock repair shop of Mr. Winky, a gentleman with a snazzy yellow vest and bushy white mustache. One day he decides the noise of all the cuckoo, grandfather, and Swiss clocks in his shop is too much, and he determines to head to the countryside to escape the commotion. You and your kids can imagine how Mr. Winky would react if he encountered a smartphone with its buzzing alerts.

About Time: A First Look at Time and Clocks, by Bruce Koscielniak
If you are blessed with a little Einstein peppering you with questions about the nature and meaning of time, before you call Stephen Hawking for advice, try this book. Bruce Koscielniak takes you through the definition of time, the ways that people have marked it, the first official calendars and early clocks and sundials across the world, as well as time zones and daylight saving time. There’s even a section about Einstein, and Koscielniak concludes, “Thinking about time may leave us wondering ever more about its mystery.” You can say that again.