The ticking of a clock, the ticking of a heart. Rachna Gilmore’s new story is a richly textured tale of family relationships, particularly between Cayley and her grandpa, who builds clocks. When he’s hospitalized after a heart attack, Cayley remembers how he reassured her when she suffered from nightmares by putting a clock by her bed and teaching her a comforting verse (“Grandpa’s here, tock/All is well, tock”). She brings the clock to his hospital room, telling him, “Cayley’s here, tock/All is well, tock.” When Grandpa returns from hospital and begins the slow journey back to health, his family is able to bring the same calm patience to his recovery that he showed when building clocks.

In this warm and delicate story of a bond between generations, we see the child not only learning woodworking skills from her grandpa, but being able to give back to him when he needs her. Governor General’s Award-winning author Gilmore uses the craft of clockmaking to show how creating a beautiful and useful object has a value beyond the material. Her imagery ties her subjects together, as when Cayley strokes her bedridden grandpa’s hand and feels the veins, “like grain on oak.”

Meissner’s watercolour illustrations for Grandpa’s Clock are also richly expressive, effectively using background washes of different colours to evoke the range of emotions. Many pictures feature the warm and grainy textures of wood, while text pages are framed in the shape of a grandfather clock, topped by an astronomical semi-circle in which a moon setting, then rising again, reflects the life-cycle theme of the story.