Patience . . . (A Slow Down Book): Discover How the Best Things in Life Take Time written by Rachel Williams and illustrated by Leonie Lord is a stunning book that explores time and place by sharing in a visually driven and engaging way life cycles of plants, animals and people. The layout of the book inspires the reader to pause, observe and ponder changes that occur over time.
Different time increments are included (eighteen in total), for example one minute, eight minutes, one hour, a night, day, month, season, a year, multiple years, right up to over one hundred years. For each of these periods of time a scientific topic is presented, in one minute your heart beats 60-100 times, on one day a dragonfly gets ready to fly, in twenty-five years a coral reef starts to form, in sixty years a patch of rainforest regrows, in over one hundred years, a Galápagos giant tortoise completes its life cycle.
Each topic is introduced, using scientific terms and information in an accessible way for young readers, 8+ years. Following this is a full page of watercolour images showing what the passing of time looks like, it’s a visual timeline for the topic where the reader can observe the effect of time passing by, what changes, what remains constant and is a perfect springboard for further wonderings. Then there is a stunning double page spread with a layout reminiscent of a graphic novel style. Child-centric illustrations with bite-sized pieces of information and succinct facts are presented in an engaging way, stepping the reader through further details about the changes that occur over the time period. Readers can track the changes using the dashed lines.