Keeping Time: From the Beginning and into the 21st Century - Hardcover

Branley, Franklyn Mansfield

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395477778 ISBN 13: 9780395477779

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

Science, folklore, and special activities are combined by the author of It's Raining Cats and Dogs in a guide to time, which explains everything from who named the weekdays to why an hour has sixty minutes.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years, forever--it's surprising how arbitrary our temporal bookkeeping is, owing as much to lore as to science. Branley ranges through history, astrology, astronomy, and modern technology to explore how we've arrived at our hodgepodge of nomenclature and method, while Weber's drawings amplify and extend the text. Surprisingly, the much-experienced author occasionally approaches but then fails to draw a conclusion--e.g., that we have 12 months because there are 12 full moons in a year. Clocks are given short shrift: pendulums aren't mentioned, and there's an anomalous drawing of a 10-hour clock with what looks like a 12-hour alarm. Nevertheless, there's a lot here for either an individual reader or a class. Bibliography; index. (Nonfiction. 8+) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Gr. 4-6. From the history of timekeeping and calendars to the theory of relativity to the reasons we divide time as we do, Branley challenges readers with difficult, abstract concepts and offers simple, concrete projects. While not entirely successful, because it sometimes skirts complex issues, the book does present a great deal of information in clear and readable form and includes little-covered subjects such as digital and atomic clocks. Weber's cartoonlike ink drawings appear on nearly every page, usually clarifying the subject (how to make a sundial), sometimes muddying it (the Big Bang), but always providing an upbeat counterpoint to the text. A handy, brief guide to the subject. Carolyn Phelan

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395477778
• ISBN 13: 9780395477779
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 105
• Illustrator: Weber Jill