Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad (9780735267541)

Time happens in the ticking of a clock, but it can also be seen in a flower. It starts with the seed, quiet and waiting in the dark. The flower emerges with bright petals. The picked flower then droops, releases those colorful petals. Time is also a tree, one that can grow beside you. It may be shorter than you at first, but who will be taller in ten years? How about fifty years? Time is a spider’s web, made carefully and invisibly. Time is transformation, a mountain eroding into a pebble or a butterfly that used to be a caterpillar. Time is sunsets, sun beams on the floor, the shine of moonlight at night. It is photographs with memories or your hair growing longer. It is a batch of bread rising and baking, or a song moving, or a wiggly loose tooth. It can move slow or fast, depending on what you are doing. It takes different shapes, moving through your day in all sorts of ways.

This quiet look at time offers so many ways to view the passage of time. Children will see themselves in some of the impatience or how wonderful times go far too quickly. The use of a flower at the beginning of the book broadens to include many examples of time passing through a regular day. Morstad’s writing is poetic and simple, the stanzas inviting readers to linger and think about time.

The illustrations are done in pencil, markers, colored inks, pastels and digitally. They have a dynamic vintage feel with an edge of modernity that invites you to explore. From the purple glow of a seed in the dark ground to the pastel softness of a butterfly’s wing to the beauty of a changing sunset that turns the page to a starry blue night, these illustrations capture the wonder of small moments in life.

Take your time with this one. Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from e-galley provided by Tundra Books.