BEAR AGAINST TIME

A bear’s life is in shambles until he learns to tell time.

Bear, large and orange, oversleeps on the top bunk. On the bottom bunk, an orange-haired child wakes and stretches. Bear’s human family (all of whom present White) has a morning routine, but Bear’s constantly late. He misses breakfast and the school bus; at school, he misses classes and lunch. Bear “will never learn how to read, count, or write,” warns the text. “The problem…is that Bear cannot tell time.” He’s so hungry from missing meals that he steals pastry and goes to jail. Family love is conditional: “If you do that again, we will not be able to keep you,” threatens Dad. Nitty-gritty clock-reading lessons from Dad in two 10-paneled spreads do succeed—after a terrifying double-page spread of Bear’s clock-dominated nightmares (including visual references to Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Salvador Dalí). Now able to tell time, Bear deserves gifts and fabulous extracurricular activities, the latter ultimately leading to burnout, a vacation in the mountains (or maybe it’s a sanatorium?), and—bafflingly—Bear’s return with a spouse and children of his own (was he not a child in the original family?). There’s a difference between simply not having learned yet to tell time and struggling with a sense of time, but here they blend, hitting neuroatypical readers hard with threats of banishment and conditional rewards. Jolivet’s comics-style illustrations highlight orange, blue, and yellow with black outlines.

This French import is meant to be funny, but beneath its lightheartedness beats a cold heart.