• Age: 6 to 9
• Grade: 1 to 4

There are, always, so many things to wonder about.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) grew up to become a famous poet, but before that, she was a little girl who lived with her Gammie and Pa in Great Village, Nova Scotia. It was there that Bishop learned to walk, to read, to write, to sing hymns, and to catch bumblebees in foxglove flowers. It was there she first went to school and, when she was five, where her mother left and never returned.

Lovingly rendered, this visual and lyrical feast tells the story of Bishop's childhood days, inspired by Bishop's own poetry and prose and her time in Great Village, paired with eclectic collage-style artwork from illustrator Emma FitzGerald (EveryBody's Different on EveryBody Street). A love letter to words, A Pocket of Time is a lesson for young readers in finding the poetry in everything.

Rita Wilson is a writer, poet, teacher, mother, grandmother, and gardener who lives on the banks of the Caribou River in Nova Scotia. She's been published in: Saltscapes, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Cumberland Review; and received the Atlantic Poetry Prize. She first discovered Elizabeth Bishop at Bishop's grandparent's home in Great Village, and immediately imagined that house as the perfect framework to introduce Bishop and her words to children and parents.

Rita Wilson's profile page

EMMA FITZGERALD was born in Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom in Southern Africa. Her early travels have given her a large appetite for adventure. Combining her interest in people and places, Emma followed a career path that was part architecture, part art. She received her BFA in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia, spending her third year at Lâ??Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where she honed her drawing skills. She then completed her undergraduate and masterâ??s degrees in Architecture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She has worked in architecture offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, and across Canada.

While working in Gambia, Emma took students onto the streets of their own communities, using sketching as their primary learning tool. When she returned to Halifax, drawing became an act of connecting with the many stories and unofficial histories of the area, a custom during her travels, but never before in Halifax. This laid the groundwork for her new book.

Emma FitzGerald's profile page

• Short-listed, Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award