EV and I made our first visit to the library two weeks ago. I wasn’t sure how EV would warm to temporary additions to her library. I shouldn’t have been concerned – we’ve average at least two reads a day on all of the positively reviewed books.
EV had one a clear favorite in this bunch, which I also thoroughly enjoyed (aside from some squinting).
At the Same Moment, Around the World by Clotilde Perrin
Gender Diversity: Plentiful!
Ethnic Diversity: Plentiful, although some Asian characters have peculiar skin tones
Challenging Language: Various country and city names
Themes to Discuss: World cultures, relative development/industrialization of different cultures, agrarian societies, kissing goodnight
EV was slow to warm to this book, which includes a look at a slice of life from each of 24 time zones around the globe. She quickly become obsessed when she realized each page featured a different kid and many small details to hunt.
Now it is her answer to everything. What are you doing EV? “At the same moment!” What do you want for dinner, EV? “At the same moment!”
I find the book delightful. It’s full of kids and teens doing everyday things, like helping to catch fish, rehearsing for a parade, and watching the world from a train. Each two-page spread features a full-bleed illustration that transitions between its two time zones. If you examine the outer edges of the page you’ll see that each image seamlessly continues over the edge of the page to the next – the book forms a continuous loop of art!
The text consists of just two sentences per pages. It is small and can be hard to read against many of the colorful painted backgrounds, at one point reversing out to white against a light background. The book should have added a screened, transparent box behind type and took it up two point sizes. Additional content includes an education spread on time zones (didn’t hold the toddler’s attention) and a fold out map of the world with all the characters connected to their cities (toddler is obsessed with this!).
After a few reads focusing on the words and the main action, EV and I started engaging with the background details of each location. There are many – enough to create multiple runs of “eye spy” through the book if your little reader gets obsessed with it.
Perrin carefully balance her distribution of genders and activities across the different cultures, such that most of the times I felt like it was reinforces a stereotype it quickly reversed. However, the some cultural stereotypes persist: Iraq is the only non-First-World country to have a large metropolitan area depicted, while Europe and America don’t focus as much on agrarian lifestyles.
In total, the book visits Senegal, France, Bulgaria, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Himalaya, Vietnam, China, Japan, Australia, New Caledonia, Russia, Samoa, United States (Hawaii, Alaska, California, Arizona), Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Greenland, the isle of Fernando de Noronha (also Brazil), and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
There are other books that do individual elements of this better – showing different places and cultures, telling the story of every day tasks – yet the combination of that with the concept of time zones is clever. That might make this a great library check-out before a kid’s first big trip that crosses time zones. If you’re considering adding this to your bookshelf, note the odd dimensions of this book – it is 13″ high by 7″ deep.
There were six other books from this week’s library, including an imaginative dinosaur tale and a whimsical book that I had to edit due to some tacit misogyny! [Read more…] about Children’s Book Review: At the Same Moment Around the World, Linus The Vegetarian T. Rex, and more…