It's About Time!: Big Ideas That Changed the World #6

Big Ideas That Changed the World #6

by Don Brown

Award-winning author-illustrator Don Brown explores the science of time in It’s About Time!, part of the Big Ideas That Changed the World graphic novel series In It’s About Time!, narrator Albert Einstein takes kids through time—literally. Measuring time is explored, from the stone circles and giant pyramids of ancient cultures to hourglasses and sundials to early time pieces and watches to atomic clocks. The book explains why there are 12 months a year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. And seven days in the week. From Stonehenge to Greenwich Mean Time to James Hutton’s Deep Time, the book helps kids understand the passage of time, and why sometimes it seems so slow and other times way, way too fast. Also Time Timeline, Who was Albert Einstein?, endnotes, and a bibliography. Big Ideas That Changed the World is a graphic novel series that celebrates the hard-won succession of ideas that ultimately changed the world. Humor, drama, and art unite to tell the story of events, discoveries, and ingenuity over time that led humans to come up with a big idea and then make it come true. Big Ideas That Changed the World to the Moon! (#1)Machines That Think! (#2)A Shot in the Arm! (#3)We the People! (#4)All Charged Up! (#5)It’s About Time! (#6)  

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science, Nonfiction, Middle Grade

128 pages, Hardcover

Published January 21, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him "a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies." He lives in New York with his family.

Reviews

[Becky B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nonfiction graphic novel that examines how humans have measured time throughout history, how clock developments impacted things like navigation, and how Einstein’s theory of relativity had humans questioning if time is constant or if it is relative.

When I picked up this book I didn’t expect the main portion of the book to break down Einstein’s theory of relativity for readers and explain how gravity, speed, the speed of light, and location impact time. Kudos to Brown for being able to break down a complex topic into a very readable and engaging graphic novel.

Notes on content:
Language: None
Sexual content: None
Violence: Einstein is the narrator and WWII and the atomic bomb comes up over the course of the book, but deaths in the war are just briefly touched on.
Ethnic diversity: The narrator is a Jewish Austrian, other scientists from around the globe and their contributions to the science of time, gravity, and other related topics are mentioned as well.
LGBTQ+ content: None specified.
Other: Don’t read this tired, or it could be hard to follow. The theoretical age of the Earth comes up, and may possibly make this book dated as that theory is revised.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Brown tries to explain time but when it gets heavy with wormholes and gravitational pull, I knew I was a little more lost than found, but it doesn't matter because there are people thinking those abstract thoughts so I don't have to. They're also the people behind time, clocks, satellites, and formulas for calculating everything from calendars and leap years to (thank you Babylonians) to slicing time into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

I've enjoyed reading through this Big Ideas series because it shows the impact of elements that we take for granted.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the opportunity to hear Don Brown speak at a conference and I have read many of his books. He does not shy away from complexity and sobering topics but his Big Ideas series does a good job of making challenging topics accessible to younger audiences. This might be his most ambitious book in the series, explaining relativity to an upper elementary to middle grade reader. He keeps great momentum.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is too dense. And yet as an accompaniment to harder books, it just might work. There are some pretty good examples. And the artwork does support it. But this is Theory of Relativity. And there is barely any through-story.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fairly understandable of Big Ideas involved with time, as presented by Albert Einstein, in this very readable graphic novel.