Bear just can't seem to get the handle on telling time and not being late. But once he does, he creates another set of problems for himself. Bear Against Time will appeal to a variety of readers across different ages, not just those learning to tell time. I really appreciate seeing self-care and overcoming burnout reflected in picture books.

Do you have students, a child, or a grandchild who needs to learn to tell time? Jean-Luc Fromental’s Bear Against Time could be just what you are looking for to help! Published in France in 2018, this fun story about a human family teaching a bear to tell time has now been translated into English for the first time with cute illustrations by Joëlle Jolievet.

Bear is living with a human family—parents and two children—and attending school. His inability to tell time causes problems all day long. Bear does not get up soon enough to eat breakfast before school, misses the bus, must stay inside to work during recess, arrives in music class with his gym gear, and more. He falls horribly behind in his classes.

When the family has one weekend to teach Bear to tell time, Father gets creative. He draws a large diagram of a pizza sliced into twelve pieces and marked with the numbers on the clock. He teaches bear to count the pizza slices to help him understand the hours on a clock, using a cutout hour hand for practice. After bear has mastered the hours, Father divides each slice of the pizza into five smaller slices to represent the minutes and adds a cutout minute hand for more practice.

By the end of the weekend, Bear has not only learned to tell time, but also been rewarded for his success. Among his rewards is a planner to organize his days. His class rank skyrockets, and he finds himself with free time for extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, the planner and all his new-found free time cause a new problem for Bear. He crams his planner with far too many activities. Having previously taught the word “punctuality,” the book now teaches “burnout.”

Bear Against Time ends happily and with a couple more surprise twists.

Fromental’s story and Jolievet’s illustrations provide a creative and fun way to teach children how to tell time. Reading the book won’t be enough, but will provide an excellent start. With individual practice using this technique, kids should quickly master reading a traditional analog clock.

Thanks to NetGalley, Norton Young Readers/W. W. Norton, and the author and illustrator for providing a review copy of this useful picture book.

I think I enjoyed the story, but it would have been much better if I could see the illustrations. As a child who learned how to tell the time very late, I easily sympathize with the bear. I'm sure many of the children will like him a lot.

I received an electronic ARC from W. W. Norton & Company through NetGalley.
Charming book to introduce telling time for younger readers plus a bit more.
Bear is constantly late. He wakes up late and the day goes from there. The family he lives with devotes a weekend to teaching him to read a clock and tell time. He finally cracks the code and makes it everywhere on time. The family give him a watch and an agenda and he is ecstatic. A great place to end the book but Fromental has more to say.
Bear becomes so caught up in activities and overscheduling that he collapses and has a breakdown. He returns to the north to rest in quiet. The author goes on to share that he meets someone and they connect and start their own family. Love the ending where he brings his family to meet the family he stayed with.
Fromental's message comes through clearly about overcommitment and our health. This is a book to be appreciated on several levels. Adults may need the reminder about schedules more than children. Everyone needs times of rest. The point is made without hammering it too hard.
The illustrations support the text. I especially love the agenda page illustrations as they get more frantic as Bear fills and overfills his time.

I was drawn to this book from the cover illustration and how it introduces the difficult concept of telling time to young readers. Unfortunately, it very much missed the mark for me. The illustrations are still eye catching and fun, but the story left much to be desired. It felt far too long and overly complex for what is already a difficult concept for young ones. It also seemed confusing in its messaging - is it learning to tell time? The importance of using time well? The whole part with the bear being arrested, is supposed to be funny, was simply not, and really more upsetting. I don’t recommend this book unfortunately.

This is a good book to get children to learn how to tell time, but I feel like it could have been a little shorter,

I always wonder if I have missed something in the translation, as this was originally French, but this is an odd book, as it appears in English. I can accept that there is a bear living with a family, and that he is going to school, as though that is a totally normal things to do in the city.

But, he is not a child, he is a bear, and in the end, we learn that bears and time don't work well together. That it is more an etherial thing, and bears are better off left to not sticking to a clock.

So, while this could be a book about learning to tell time from an analogue clock, it also appears to be a book saying that time doesn't matter.

What's odd, besides that a bear is going to grade school, is that the bear is left to do whatever he wants. Why is he left alone in the classroom. Why can't he get a late lunch? Why do the children not help him catch the bus. All questions that are answered by saying if he can't tell time, he can't do these things.

So, while I appreciate that this is a book with urgency to teach time, it also has the message that time is not important if you live off the grid.

So, I am a bit torn on this one, but think that it could have been a much simpler book, without all the story of shaming bear.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This is a simply lovely, well written book with beautiful illustrations. Perfect for getting younger children interested in the concept of time. Would highly recommend.

Bear always shows up for everything at the wrong time. He’s late for school, he misses lunch and goes to the wrong classrooms, and he doesn’t come home on time. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to tell time. The father in the human family he lives with (for some unexplained reason) teaches him how to read a clock, and Bear’s life suddenly changes. Now he’s always on time and he has plenty of free time, which he fills up with so many extra-curricular activities that he collapses from burnout. It’s a little unclear what the point of this book is. Is it to teach children how to read a clock? Is it to make a point about the importance of being on time? Or is it a warning against the harmful effects of an overly busy schedule? While these are all valid points, they don’t mesh into a cohesive story. I don’t especially recommend this book.

This book is a lovely combination of story and instructions for how to tell the time. This is done in such a creative way that you can start to forget that it isn't just a story. The illustrations are also lovely. I expect this book will be really useful as a way of presenting time to children who have previously struggled.

Lovely book to teach children not only to tell the time but also the importance of being on time and being organised. However, this book also goes a little bit further and opens the door to a more philosophical reading - you could open questions about: the time on the clock and how people/ children feel time, and time passing in our lives. It is a book that can be used, let’s say - many times! The illustrations are engaging and entertaining and meets the storyline well.

I was drawn to this book because the cover reminded me of Seymour Chwast and I like reading picture books in translation. It's easy to look at a book like this and just think it's a cute book about a bear learning to tell time. Bear is late to all kinds of things (school, lunch, gym class, the bus home) and in a few very cluttered pages learns how to tell time. Clocks are sort of visible throughout, but not prominent or readable. Shouldn't there be clocks in the subsequent pages so Bear (and the reader) can practice what this new skill? This is aside from the fact that most of the problems Bear experiences because he's late are because the people around him aren't telling him. The book visually proposes that he's part of a family, but they clearly treat Bear very differently than they do their other children despite the fact that he goes to the same school, takes the same bus, and shares a room with them. Whatever. It's a picture book, right? Why does that matter?

It does matter. Bear misses lunch (despite the fact that his entire class leaves?) and on his way home (walking, because he missed the bus) he stops at a bakery and eats all the pastries and is arrested. His family has to come and pick him up, at which point the father says to Bear, "If you do that again, we won't be able to keep you." Yikes bikes. A lot of children are adopted or in the foster system and I cannot imagine how a kid would feel hearing those words. This is a bear who speaks and has agency, who is (sort of) treated as their child but is clearly not. The dad knows it, Bear knows it, and the dad wants Bear to know it -- effectively weaponizing Bear's outsider status against him. Why not something like you'll get in trouble? Why isn't this a conversation between Bear and the dad? Every single word kids hear helps to build their brains, so why would you even plant these seeds in their heads?? It's a tiny moment, but our lives are made up of tiny moments!

Additionally there are only 4 non-white people in the background (and that is a generous count). Perhaps it's because the colors in the ARC are a bit muted, but I'm not sure how much of a difference brightness would make.

Poor bear is never on time to anything. The cute illustrations and storyline really make the reader feel sorry for him, but it is fun to watch and learn along with bear as he learns how to tell time.