WHAT'S THE TIME, WILFRED WOLF?

Oh, the problems you can have when you can’t tell time!

Wilfred Wolf is thrilled to be invited to Ella’s party, but how will he know when it’s 3:00? He doesn’t want to miss a thing! Maybe his friends can help. But Boris Bear’s cuckoo clock startles Wilfred, who not only drops his lunch, but the clock as well. Now what? Amelia Squirrel offers to lend Wilfred her digital watch, but he learns the hard way that watches and water don’t mix. Oscar Owl’s solution sees Wilfred knocking on Ella’s door at 3 a.m., and Henry Rooster only greets the dawn—no special requests. Exhausted, Wilfred goes home and sleeps until afternoon, when his friends knock on his door and teach him to tell time by drawing a clock face on the ground and take him to the party, where he has a fantastic time. This lone double-page spread is the only instruction in telling time that readers will get, though Barrah incorporates many different types of timepieces and ways of telling time—by the sunrise, by when you are tired or hungry, etc. Unaddressed is Wilfred’s destruction of so many timepieces. Smallman’s anthropomorphized characters exude friendly enthusiasm. Backmatter includes a page of questions and activities for adults to share with readers.

Not the best teaching tool, though it does address aspects of time often left out of other books on time-telling.