The Grouchy Lady Bug- Concept Book

Anyone who has read an Eric Carle book knows what wonderful books they are. They always seem to have beautiful pictures and great messages to get across to children. A lot of his books are interactive stories that keep the readers engaged. The Grouchy Ladybug not only taught a lesson on sharing and being kind to others, but it also incorporated the concept of time. The grouchy ladybug flew along and came upon a new animal to challenge each hour. The story starts at 6 o'clock in the morning and ends at 6 o'clock at night. Each page also shows a picture of the sun's location at all of the hours. At the end of the story, the grouchy ladybug comes across a whale. She reaches different parts of the whale in fifteen minute increments. The only problem I had with this was that it seems to give the students a false sense of time. I would not think that it would take a ladybug fifteen minutes to fly from a whale's head to it's fin. And it certainly wouldn't take a ladybug 45 minutes to fly the length of a whale. I would not use this to teach time because I would be afraid it would confuse my students. They would either think ladybugs move as fast as snails or they would think that fifteen minutes is equivalent to about how long five minutes actually takes. It has a great moral lesson and is an extremely cute book, but doesn't do as wonderful of a job with the reality of time.