Review: Forever Or A Day


What is the one thing we never seem to have enough, want more of but use the worst? Time. Of course. The supreme paradox.

Sarah Jacoby presents the infinite conflicts of time, its beauty, its mystic, its individual universal completeness with poetic tenderness and simplicity.

Forever or a Day opens not bleakly but cloaked in somber hues representing night, perhaps the beginning of time. Pinpricks of starlight dissolve into a flood of new day colour, awakening one small boy and the reader's immediate curiosity. 'If you look closely you can see it. ...almost touch it.' See what? What is there to hold? As dawn brightens into morning, the boy breakfasts, attempts to dress himself. He is joyously absorbed in his family's morning routines, blissfully unaware of what is passing him by.

But today is a special day, marked by a special occasion for the boy and his family; a train ride through the countryside, to visit his grandparents who live by the sea. Leaving his city home far behind, the boy wonders if this is what forever feels like. It's a long long train ride...

Holiday encounters are filled with bliss, building castles and friendships and memories. The boy would love to stay longer and wonders why he can't. Farewells are tinged with regret but also solid gratitude.

We've only got what we've got after all and it doesn't matter how you spend it as long as it's with people who matter to you. Time can't be exchanged or prolonged or kept forever, this the boy comes to realise after spending time with his family.

Jacoby's supremely individualistic illustrations harness a rainbow of colours, light and shade to support her reflective narrative. By the close of day, we all come to understand that one of our most precious commodities is not something we can simply buy or cheat our way out of but if we accept the incongruities of time, ultimately we can make better use of it.

Forever or a Day is a sublime book to share with your children, time and time again, the essence of which is to remind you to do so in the first place.

Highly recommended.

Title: Forever Or A Day
Author: Sarah Jacoby
Illustrator: Sarah Jacoby
Publisher: Chronicle Books , $34.99
Publication Date: March 2017
Format: Hardcover
ISBN:  9781452164632
For ages: 5 – 9
Type: Picture Book

 Buy the Book: Chronicle Books (US), Booktopia, Boomerang Books


Comments

Norah Colvin said…
This sounds like a gorgeous book, Dimity. I look forward to spending those days with family again. It's difficult being locked away from them. Let these days pass quickly and those days last longly.
30 March 2020 at 20:45
DimbutNice said…
So truly spoken, Norah. Ironcially, I chanced upon this book during a recent library visit, before time changed for us all. It holds much significance, poignancy and hope.
30 March 2020 at 22:29
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Goldfish Boy

Image
Twelve-year-old Matthew Corbin is your regular pre-teen boy living in an unspectacular cul-de-sac deep in British suburbia. The major difference between him and the other inhabitants of Chestnut Close however is the state of his red-raw hands and tortured mind and the fact that he barely steps outside his terraced-home second story bedroom. Matthew is afflicted with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD and can barely function as a result. From his fishbowl vantage point, Matthew keeps track of his neighbours, dutifully recording their every movement, their comings and goings, and their habitual rituals in his notebooks. In this way we are introduced to the residents and their characteristic irks and quirks from the get go in a way that is both intriguing and comical. Matthew’s observations allude to his condition; he is both analytical and detailed in his approach. The orderliness of his notations suggest a mind used to repetition and accuracy, an intense desire to ‘get things r...
Read more

Review: Detention

Image
Tristan Bancks signed my copy of Detention with a note hoping it kept me turning pages . This book lived up to that promise and then some. Packed with page-turning tension and relentless drama, this is one middle grade novel that may cause a few kids to miss their dinner call. Yet despite the raw gritty urgency that suffuses nearly every page and the elevated sense of dread and desperation that keeps your heart in top gear, the pace is never too manic nor too hectic to enjoy the energising mix of edgy excitement and sincere emotion Bancks does so well. Dan is an inner suburban boy living on the outer perimeters of life. He’s classified as trailer park trash because of his permanent residence at the social-economically deprived Midgenba caravan park. It’s a title that comes with an ineradicable smear of hopeless. Deep down though, Dan’s a good kid, a caring kid. The type of kid who’ll risk his own face to save a vicious dying dog, which he does one day after finding Rosco tied ...
Read more

I've got a dream

Image
Almost a decade of moons ago, I made a serendipitous discovery that forever altered the spin of my world. Falling pregnant after so many years of waiting and yearning was nothing short of miraculous (for me) and a life event definitely worth waxing lyrical about. But did I? Sadly, not as much I as wanted to. There are those who find it hard to exist without sharing the contents of their dinner plates with the rest of  the world, then there are others who worry that a beautifully executed birthday cake photo shared on social media will somehow demean the starving populations of the world. I oscillate between the two but tend towards the latter, always fretting over how others will take good news in light of their own current situations and struggles, thus resorting to a severe downplaying of my own good fortune. The pregnancy of my first child should have been a joyous occasion - it was a joyous pregnancy after all - but I was acutely conscious at the time of another family me...
Read more