Just a Second

by Steve Jenkins, Steve Jenkins (Illustrator)

Overview

What happens in just a second? 

A bat makes 200 high-pitched calls. 

A hummingbird beats its wings 50 times. 

A woodpecker hammers a tree trunk with its beak 20 times. 

A human can blink 7 times. 

A vulture in fight flaps its wings once. 

This nonfiction picture book explores the concept of time as a series of events in the natural world that take place in given units of time. Steve Jenkins's stunning collage illustrations and fascinating collection of facts create an engaging and interconnected look at time, animals, science, and the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328740861
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	660,491
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	870L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Steve Jenkins wrote and illustrated many nonfiction picture books for young readers, including the Caldecott Honor Book What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? His books have been called stunning, eye-popping, inventive, gorgeous, masterful, extraordinary, playful, irresistible, compelling, engaging, accessible, glorious, and informative.

Steve Jenkins wrote and illustrated many nonfiction picture books for young readers, including the Caldecott Honor Book What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? His books have been called stunning, eye-popping, inventive, gorgeous, masterful, extraordinary, playful, irresistible, compelling, engaging, accessible, glorious, and informative.

Editorial Reviews

"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, starred review "This is a fascinatingly different way to approach natural history as well as time..."— Bulletin "Jenkins renders this package both eye-catching and mind boggling. Teachers will find good jumping-off points here for math, science, and history discussions."— School Library Journal, starred review —

From the Publisher

Jenkins isn't here to lecture but to enlighten. With a dazzling array of science and nature facts on the order of Ripley's Believe It or Not, he succeeds in teaching children about time even as he's bound to pique their interest in a wide variety of behaviors, animal…human…and mechanical…the material is organized and arranged with care by Jenkins, whose meticulous cut-paper collage illustrations are detailed and yet unfussy.
—The New York Times

Pamela Paul

Jenkins brings fresh perspective to the passage of time in a thought-provoking picture book that features his typically elegant cut-paper collages. With a particular focus on the natural world and mankind’s impact on it, Jenkins lists diverse events that occur in the space of a second, a minute, an hour, and so on. In one week, a ladybug eats more than 500 aphids, while each month “The world’s human population increases by about 6,556,000 people. (11,616,000 are born and 5,060,000 die).” Jenkins also covers “very quick” and “very slow” amounts of time: a fast ball reaches home plate in “less than 4/10 of a second,” while in one billion years, “Earth will be too hot to support life.” Back matter offers information about life spans, population growth, and Earth’s history. 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. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 2–5—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? Jenkins's fascinating way of looking at time is bolstered by a wide variety of examples from nature and man, and while many are simply fun, others will give somber pause, like the average use of 19 gallons of fresh water per hour for every person on Earth or the use of 200 billion sheets of letter-size paper in one day. With his trademark torn- and cut-paper collages in rich earth tones, Jenkins renders this package both eye-catching and mind-boggling. Teachers will find good jumping-off points here for math, science, and history discussions. With this browser's delight around, it's a sure bet that more than one young reader will be spotted trying to count blinks per second. (That would be seven.)—Alyson Low, Fayetteville Public Library, AR

School Library Journal