All in a day by Chihiro Takeuchi

This seek-and-find picture book is intended to teach children to read the time on a traditional clock. It's formatted in a vertical rectangle, showing the activity and movement in a tall apartment building throughout the day.

As seen on the cover, the building includes a large clock and it signals the different activities throughout the day. The story starts at 7am with people eating breakfast, the baker opening his shop, and people moving around on the streets. It goes through the day with meals and random activities, from a barber opening his shop to an artist starting work to the ice cream truck. At 11 o'clock, most people are asleep, but Grandma's cats, the artist and the musician are still awake. During the early hours of the morning only the cats and mice move around, but at 4am the baker starts his bread and a child delivering newspapers appears.

The art is small, collage-style with multiple details, the people looking like little wooden dolls. There book has an I Spy aspect, as each spread of a time includes things to look for, like counting cats, seeing which direction the weathervane on the building is pointing, and looking for quirky details like a person with a pet alligator. The skin shades shown are mostly tan and pink, with a few darker brown. A few characters, mostly older men, are shown with a bigger body type and one uses a cane at one point. A child in a wheelchair is shown in one illustration. 

This story is pretty stereotyped - all the people depicted working are males and the women are shown as an artist at home, caring for children, and shopping. Like most picture books depicted urban areas, it's extremely clean and the little cartoon illustrations show a uniform group of people who all appear healthy, happy, and well cared for. The idea of learning to read an analog clock by following the activities throughout the day is not a new one, but most of the events, other than perhaps meal times, are not really tied to any particular time, so this would need a lot of explaining.

Verdict: Despite the drawbacks of the book, I do get regular if infrequent requests for learning to read analog clocks and it has an old-fashioned, Richard Scarry-esque feel that will appeal to some people. The I Spy aspect is fun and offers a challenge to older readers especially. This would work in conjunction with another, more explicit book on reading clocks or as an additional and supplemental purchase.

ISBN: 9781922610546; Published April 2023 by Berbay Pub; Review copy provided by publisher