365: How to Count a Year

A bright, buoyant look at measurements, conventional and otherwise.

A year's worth of days is a lot to wrap one's head around, as signified by the 365 neatly numbered circles that fill the front endpapers of this chatty explainer from Paul (Little Libraries, Big Heroes) and Chung (Vrooom, Vrooom!). Revealing that a year technically equals 365 and a quarter days, the creators break the temporal measurement into more manageable segments, all portrayed in posterlike digital pictures starring a brown-skinned child and a bright yellow lion companion. Sure, a year can represent "hopefully, 365 clean pairs of underwear," but it can also be "52 get-naked-and-SPLASH Sunday baths" (the lion dives head first into the tub) or 12 monthly "clean-the-fish-tank messes" (the duo imagine they are deep-sea divers). Even smaller increments exist, of course--though the creators acknowledge that thinking about a year as, say, 525,600 minutes "could drag on and on and on." Ultimately, time is what one makes of it, and the book ends advocating for reflection over mere enumeration: "1 marvelous collage of 1 year in the life of you." An afterword delves into calendars and adds plenty more about "how much can happen in one year." Ages up to 8. Author's agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. Illustrator's agent: Rubin Pfeffer, Rubin Pfeffer Content. (Sept.)