cover image The Boy Who Stopped Time

The Boy Who Stopped Time

Anthony Taber. Margaret K. McElderry Books, $13.95 (1pp) ISBN 978-0-689-50460-0

When Julian interrupts the pendulum in the hall clock just before 7:30 p.m., he unwittingly brings to life a fantasy of kids who have felt hampered by an imposed bedtime: he stops time, freezing everything and everyone else in their tracks, thus freeing himself up to explore, unhindered by the hour. Giving his still-as-a-statue mother ``a secret kiss good-bye,'' Julian bikes into town, past a frozen array of familiar faces and events, until ``his feeling of silence started to become a feeling of sadness, and he knew that he wanted to go home.'' Despite such attempts to impart emotion to his scenario, Taber's prose falls curiously flat, devoid of the thrill and fear that might accompany such an illicit adventure. In addition, some of the activities the pajama-clad Julian witnesses (the town librarian reading to a youngster, children cavorting on a playground, a car mechanic at work) seem inconsistent with the evening hour. Taber's finely crafted, detailed black-and-white pencil drawings reproduce the stillness of the images with photographic crispness, although the boy's features and haircut seem to vary on different spreads. While visually engaging, the book's staid, matter-of-fact tone seems more a missed opportunity than a flight of fancy. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)