Once Upon an Hour

There are any number of books which feature the 12 animals of the Asian zodiac which is especially popular around the time of the Lunar New Year. Here, in a book from an author and illustrator both with Korean backgrounds, the same animals are used to represent the hours on a clock face.

A small child dressed in peasant garb has gone out in search of something special. He (or she? It is never specified) needs to find some doraji plants* to make a healing tea for the child’s sick mother.

[*Doraji = root of the balloon flower, also known as Korean bellflower]

Mountain, who oversees the child’s world, realizes what is at stake but is, itself, immovable. So it appeals, one by one, to a number of animals for help, and, one by one, they find reasons to avoid doing what the child asks. As readers turn the pages of the book, Rabbit says:

”When the sun peeks over the eastern horizon, it’s time for me

to chase the moon away.”

Sheep has this excuse:

When the afternoon sun starts to tilt, it’s time for me to graze.”

In the last hour, Tiger offers this:

”When the moon gets ready to slumber, it’s time for me to stretch my muscles.”

When 12 animals have all spoken, Rabbit realizes the weary sadness in the child and encourages the others to finally all pitch in to find the elusive doraji plant and return the child home.

“We can help,” they said. Horse carried a sack of doraji. Sheep

made a warm blanket out of wool. Monkey picked the ripest

persimmons to feed the child.

The culmination of the story expresses the praise Mountain offers the animals for coming to the child’s aid.

In appreciation of their fine efforts, Mountain offered the animals

the gift of time, divided into the hours in which they had each

helped the child in need.

The story, with its echoes of The Little Red Hen (“Not I,” said the Pig), is framed with a beginning and ending featuring a modern-day interchange between a mother and her child who wants to learn to tell time. Mother shares her memory of being told this quest story which helped her learn to tell the time. Together, they fashion a clock with the animals around its face, each at the time of day it is first mentioned in the tale.

The repetitive text here is soothing in cadence, if not highly original or very dramatic.

Cut paper illustrations from artist Soyeon Kim use pleasing colours, and the winsome expressions on the face of the hopeful child make readers sympathetic to the situation. But the pictures are somewhat rough and amateurish in execution, and pages intended to evoke mist or cloud just look like blurry printing errors.

Once Upon an Hour is a passable addition to libraries wanting stories with folkloric structure or Asian settings, but it will not be useful in actually helping young ones learn to tell the time.