Cookie Time
by Jessie Sima; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Simon    56 pp.
9/24    9781665936743    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781665936750    $10.99

Kat and Ari love baking cookies with Grandpa but struggle with the wait while the treats are in the oven. So they build a time machine to skip ahead to when the cookies are done—but they miscalculate and arrive to find them already eaten. Determined to enjoy the cookies, they hop back into the time machine to try again. By mistake, they visit a time when they were much younger; in fact, their “very first cookie time with Grandpa!” They watch their younger selves with joy, realizing it had been “a perfect day.” Next they end up in the future and even find a self-serve “Cookie Time” kiosk, sans humans: “NO WAITING,” the sign says. That’s when they realize that the key ingredient of cookie time is what’s missing: Grandpa. They head back to the present for a big hug—and cookies, of course. Sima has fun with the story’s imaginative details: the children build the time machine out of a cardboard box, a spring, and their dog’s ball. The future (where “everything seemed different”) is filled with pastel-colored windmills, houses on legs, and robotic pets; the twist ending will please dog lovers. A warm intergenerational story about cherishing the present moment and realizing what’s important.

From the ">September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.