TIME OUT! Fix That Clock by Kurt Cyrus

Tock, Tick, Clunk!
The clock’s a pile of junk.
Rusty, dusty, moldy, musty.
Tock, Tick, Clunk!

The once splendid town tower clock is telling no time.

The tower is rickety, tippy, and tottery, good mostly for housing bats and mice.

It’s time to take time to fix that clock.

Marching up the ramp
Up we march the fix the clock.
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

Armed with sledge crowbars and hammers, the three workers repair the broken-down stair.

Swing that hammer, Super Slamer.

Bam! BAM! BAM!

At last the workers take on the most demanding task–-repairing the rust-encrusted clockwork!

Give the gears a yank.

Tock, Tick, CLANK!

And then the newly oiled and polished gears are meshing and the clock is ticking and bonging out the hour, in Kurt Cyrus’ delightfully chiming and rhyming Fix That Clock (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Author Cyrus’s latest is filled with delicious poesy, the rhymes are just right, onamatopoeia abounds in with construction sounds, the ousted animals are re-housed in little homes fashioned from wood scraps, and appropriately, the job is done right at quitting time. Artist Cyrus fills his double-page spreads with charmingly realistic paintings, enlivened by dizzying perspectives, and there are touches of visual humor, as a mouse runs up the overall leg of one worker and with quirky independence, the carpenters cut windows–-square, semi-circular, circular, and triangular--giving the reader plenty of action to peruse on each page.

And all in good time, there she stands, restored, the Queen of Clocks! Altogether an outstanding example of picture book art, this one is must-have for children’s collections, just the thing for young time-telling students' story time.