The ticking of the pendulum clock in the house accompanies a family’s every-day life. The clock says when it’s time to get up, when to drink coffee, when to hang up the laundry to dry, and when it’s time to go back to bed. And in the night, when all is quiet, its ticking roams around the whole house. Grandpa never forgets to wind the clock up with his small key.
But one day Grandpa dies. This causes not only the inhabitants of the house to fall out of time, but also all the things in it. The soup doesn’t get hot anymore, the laundry doesn’t dry, the plants don’t grow anymore, and a baby isn’t born. Only after one of Grandpa’s grandsons finds the clock's key in his Grandpa’s jacket pocket does the world start spinning again. Life resumes its rhythm, auntie’s baby is born.
A sense of security and of loss, becoming and then dying away again – in this poetic and finely-drawn picture book, Samuel Castaño Mesa finds the words and the pictures that help us to give our feelings about death and grieving their due space. If the clock stutters or even stops – there’s always a key to be found that brings life back up to speed.

The author

Samuel Castaño Mesa was born in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1988. He studied graphic design at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, the city in which he still lives today and where he works as a freelance illustrator. My Grandfather’s Clock is the first book which he has both written and illustrated himself. In his work he likes to combine various techniques – in this book it’s pencils, watercolours and collages. In 2015 Samuel Castaño Mesa was given a Bologna Ragazzi Award in the category New Horizons for his illustrations in the book Mil orejas.