Time Flies (Caldecott Honor Book) - Hardcover

Rohmann, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517595982 ISBN 13: 9780517595985

Publisher: Crown Books for Young Readers, 1994

Synopsis

Time Flies , a wordless picture book, is inspired by the theory that birds are the modern relatives of dinosaurs.  This story conveys the tale of a bird trapped in a dinosaur exhibit at a natural history museum.  Through Eric's use of color, readers can actually see the bird enter into a mouth of a dinosaur, and then escape unscathed.

Eric Rohmann's Caldecott Honor-winning debut is now available as a Dragonfly paperback. It is at once a wordless time-travel adventure and a meditation on the scientific theory that dinosaurs were the evolutionary ancestors of birds. The New York Times Book Review called Time Flies "a work of informed imagination and masterly storytelling unobtrusively underpinned by good science...an entirely absorbing narrative made all the more rich by its wordlessness." Kirkus Reviews hailed it as "a splendid debut."

About this title

About the Author

Eric Rohmann's first book for children, Time Flies, was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1995, and was called a splendid debut by Kirkus Reviews.  Eric holds degrees in fine arts from Arizona State University and Illinois State University.  He is a former teacher, and has exhibited his artwork as numerous galleries and museums across the country.

Eric is a painter, printmaker, and a fine bookmaker, and he lives outside of Chicago.  

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 3-In this wordless journey back in time, a bird flies into a museum filled with dinosaur skeletons. The walls dissolve and the skeletons take on flesh, coming to life. In a dramatic picture, the bird is eaten by what appears to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. But the dinosaur's flesh fades away, as gradually and mysteriously as it had first appeared, and the bird flies free, easily escaping from what is again nothing but bones. The columns of the museum's grand hall reappear, and the bird flies off into the sky, watched by a pterodactyl gargoyle. This impressive effort is rather like David Wiesner's Tuesday (Clarion, 1991), sharing its elements of technical expertise and surreal fantasy. Rohmann's oil paintings (all double-page spreads) show the inside of the museum in warm, burnished browns and reds, while the colors are cooler and more varied in the outdoor light of the prehistoric scenes. Unusual perspectives and striking compositions and images make for a dynamic and intriguing book. The picture of the bird balanced on the teeth of the skeleton is a remarkable juxtaposition of delicacy and strength. This title has potential for classroom use- when studying paleontology or evolution, preparing for a field trip, or doing creative writing projects. All in all, a title that children will love.
Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Yes, no--it's a metaphor! Rohmann's wordless first book shows a bird flying into a dinosaur museum one dark and stormy night. The bird flits about, perching on a dinosaur jaw and soaring on. As it flies past one particular behemoth, the bones of the creature are suddenly cloaked in flesh; the bird has entered a prehistoric landscape. A dinosaur eventually swallows the bird, but as it wings its way down the creature's throat and through its digestive system, the would-be predator is transformed to a skeleton and the bird returns once again to the museum hall. The meaning of this exercise is unclear, although a jacket note explains that Rohmann was "inspired by the theory that birds are the modern relatives of the dinosaurs." The target audience will likely be mystified. Slightly older readers, however, might be intrigued by the time-travel conceit and the scientifically minded will be wowed by Rohmann's oil paintings, which capture the textures of bone, tooth, eyeball, etc., with as much attentiveness and morbidity as, say, an 18th-century still life of gamebirds. Ages 4-9.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cinematically, lightning strikes an ecclesiastical-looking building even before this wordless book's title spread, on which a bird flies into its barrel-vaulted hall. But this is no church: the figures that top these columns are Mesozoic, not medieval, while the dinosaur skeletons in the otherwise empty space suggest a surreal museum. As the bird flies from the ancient bones toward their shadows, cast by the lightning, it's transported (in an arresting visual segue) to the dinosaurs' era. Several entrancing spreads later, it flutters away from a mild-eyed giant to confront one less benign. Snapped up, it flutters down a gullet- -and out past airy ribs, into the museum. Rohmann gives the excursion compelling immediacy by using intense colors and arresting points of view. In his beautifully composed spreads, the museum's glowering sandstone hues are imaginatively played off against the early world's innocent sky blue and vegetable green, the tiny, lithe bird against the lumbering primeval giants, flesh against bone, shadow against substance. A splendid debut. (Picture book. 4-9) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 5-8. In this wordless picture book, Rohmann sets the scene in a natural-history museum, where the dinosaur hall suddenly time-shifts into the Age of Reptiles (or were the dinosaurs the ancestors of today's birds?). During a thunderstorm, a bird flies among the dinosaur skeletons in the majestic hall. The scene subtly changes, as the walls become a landscape, the stone columns turn into trees, and the bones flesh out into living creatures. Swallowed by one of the dinosaurs, the bird flies down its throat, only to find the flesh thinning out to the bone framework again and the museum reappearing. The bird flies free again, out of the beast and out of the building. It's a short trip, but kids fascinated by dinosaurs may enjoy this vicarious voyage back in time. The handsome, atmospheric paintings heighten the drama as they tell their simple, somewhat mysterious, and quite short story. Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517595982
• ISBN 13: 9780517595985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32