Grandpa's Clock

Grandpa's saw sings me awake. I tumble out of bed and hurry downstairs, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Grandpa's white hair glistens as he bends over the table-saw, feeding in an oakboard. He turns the saw off and pushes the safety goggles onto his forehead. "You started without me," I wail. "Calm your nerves, Cayley," Grandpa chuckles. "Your clock won't be done in a day." I grin. Mine. This one's all mine. When Grandpa finished the grandfather clock for Josie's wedding, he said it was my turn. "Slow and steady," that's how you make a grandfather clock. Grandpa should know. He and Cayley have made nineteen clocks together. Now they are making Cayley's very own, a Lord Nelson. Then, one night, Cayley awakes to the sound of a siren. Grandpa is gone. Cayley is scared by what she sees when she is allowed to visit him in the hospital. But scared or not, she knows what Grandpa needs, and she tells him, "Slow and steady" as he heals. The Lord Nelson clock waits, patiently, to be finished. Teachers guide available here. Rachna Gilmore likes to think of her writing process as "plarking, a mixture of play and work, with the word lark in there too." She is the award-winning author of many books for children, and when she's not writing she loves walking and gardening, especially designing gardens. Grandpa's Clock was inspired by Rachna's father-in-law, who began to build beautiful grandfather clocks in his retirement. He read the manuscript for her to ensure that all the details were accurate. Rachna lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario. Amy Meissner is a Canadian living in Anchorage, Alaska, where she sometimes sees wobbly moose calves in her yard in the spring. During the long dark winter, kids wield flashlights as they wait on the corner for the school bus. She says that "reading the manuscript for Grandpa's Clock was like walking into a house that I wanted to live in for a long time." She researched the story with great care, especially every detail of clocks and clock-making. The illustrations were created using watercolor.Gilmore, Rachna is the author of 'Grandpa's Clock ' with ISBN 9781551433332 and ISBN 1551433338.