The Story of Clocks and Calendars

This book is a good book for elementary students to learn about the different types of clocks and calendars and how they have evolved throughout the years. The text is a little advanced, but the teacher can help with the reading. The book provides many pictures of the clocks and calendars used.

This books is a fun little read. It is about the history of clocks and calendars, and what time has come to mean over the years to different people. I didn't know much about this subject, so I actually learned a lot from this book. The illustrations are great and do a wonderful job explaining a lot

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of the things talked about in the text. There's stuff about the Chinese, Mayan, Greek, Egyptian, and European cultures and how they each kept time, both day to day, and through the years. The lunar and solar cycles are explained and how people kept time watching the moon and the sun. Also, a lot is explained about accuracy in time keeping and how clocks are made. It is very technical. The book includes added information at the end and an index. There's also a list of other books in The American Story series. Although there is not an "about the author" section, it is clear that the author does know what she's talking about, since there are other books in this series as well. There is no need for a glossary because everything is explained in the text. A lot of the illustrations have captions as well, which helps to farther explain the concepts discussed in the text. This is a wonderful book to have in history classrooms, science classrooms, and math classrooms. It's great for cross curriculum.

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The illustrations are pleasant to the eye. But some of them were poorly researched and are incorrect as is some of the text. These errors seem more culpable as the book is not long, and contains very little text.

An instance of a factual error in the text is the mention of the Roman Emperor, Numa

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Pompilius, who ruled in the seventh century BC on page 24. Since there was no Roman Empire in the seventh century BC, and wasn't really going to be one for several hundred years, Numa Pompilius can not have been an emperor. Numa Pompilius was one of the early, and possibly legendary, kings of Rome.

An instance of an error in the illustrations is on p.19, where a Greek astronomer is depicted using an Arab astrolabe to take a star sight. The astrolabe in the illustration of the astronomer is copied from the illustration of the Arab astrolabe right next to it, evidently. But the Arab astrolabe was really a sophisticated computational instrument, unlikely to be used for measuring angles in the heavens, and invented about 1000 years later, anyway.

However, there is a really nice illustration of a Greek water clock that must have run pretty steadily.

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The illustrations are pleasant to the eye. But some of them were poorly researched and are incorrect as is some of the text. These errors seem more culpable as the book is not long, and contains very little text.

An instance of a factual error in the text is the mention of the Roman Emperor, Numa

Show More

Pompilius, who ruled in the seventh century BC on page 24. Since there was no Roman Empire in the seventh century BC, and wasn't really going to be one for several hundred years, Numa Pompilius can not have been an emperor. Numa Pompilius was one of the early, and possibly legendary, kings of Rome.

An instance of an error in the illustrations is on p.19, where a Greek astronomer is depicted using an Arab astrolabe to take a star sight. The astrolabe in the illustration of the astronomer is copied from the illustration of the Arab astrolabe right next to it, evidently. But the Arab astrolabe was really a sophisticated computational instrument, unlikely to be used for measuring angles in the heavens, and invented about 1000 years later, anyway.

However, there is a really nice illustration of a Greek water clock that must have run pretty steadily.

Show Less