With her newest published picture book, Carmel Valley author-illustrator Pam Fong pays tribute to one of her favorite places in Paris. “The Clock” tells a tale of time, how a forgotten train station transformed into a famous art museum, the Musée d’Orsay.
Built in 1900 for Paris’ world’s fair exposition, the ornate gold clock presided over the Gare d’Orsay, the station on the banks of the Seine considered a technological marvel featuring the first trains powered by electricity. As chronicled by Fong’s pictures in the book, the fast-changing city quickly outgrew the once remarkable train station and it was sadly abandoned, before being rediscovered and rejuvenated years later as a world-class art museum.
“It’s a story about what happens when one loses purpose, and how beautiful second chances can be,” Fong said.
“The Clock” is Fong’s seventh picture book and her first non-fiction title. The lifelong artist became a storyteller later in life, when her sons went off to college: “I could actually hear myself think”. Before launching her career as an author and illustrator seven years ago, she was in development for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and for museums and private art galleries, putting her masters in arts management to work. She also owned her own boutique graphic and website design firm.
Fong’s family is originally from Taiwan and they immigrated to the United States when she was two. She grew up in San Juan Capistrano and made her way down to San Diego to attend UC San Diego to study visual arts and art history. When she went off to Carnegie Mellon University for her master’s degree, she met her future husband, a Parisian. The couple lived in Paris and started their family there before moving back to San Diego.
Even before meeting her Parisian husband, Fong was a Francophile—she would work to earn her way to Paris every summer, learned the language, studied the arts, and become closely familiar with the city and all its sights, especially the museums.
Carmel Valley author and illustrator Pam Fong’s new book pays tribute to one of her favorite places in Paris. (Jody Pinchin)
In Paris, she spent a lot of time at the Musée d’Orsay and with the clock.
“The clock presides over the whole museum,” Fong said. “When I was there as much as people don’t believe it, I was terribly homesick. I wanted to come home from Paris. To allay those feelings, I would go to the museum, just to feel something familiar. It was like that clock was my friend.”
“Personally I just love this clock so much. Years later, just the feeling of it being there for me really stuck with me.”
For the book, she drew on her art history background and did a lot of research. Opening in 1986, the museum is one of the newer ones in Paris, badly needed as the Louvre’s collection was overflowing. The old train station’s original fate was for it to be razed and a hotel built in its place. Instead, the Musée d’Orsay has become one of the most visited art museums in the world, with 3.9 million guests a year viewing the works of Monet, van Gogh and Renoir under the watchful guidance of the historic clock.
The artist sketched her studies on paper first before drawing digitally on a Wacom Tablet, recreating the train station, clock and museum down to the most minute detail—the book includes 19 spreads stretching from the 1900s to modern day. Fong referenced black and white images to capture not only the look of the space throughout its history but the Paris patrons’ fashions.
“It took forever, this project almost killed me and I had to take some time off,” admitted Fong, who carefully re-created the architecture and 200 characters. “It was very, very time-consuming, the most extensive project I’ve done.”
Pam Fong’s newest book “The Clock” tells the story of the transformation of a Paris train station into an art museum, the Musée d’Orsay. (Courtesy Pam Fong)
Per the early reviews, her meticulous work paid off.
“With arresting majesty, a huge, ornately wrought golden clock presides like a mechanical sun over this Parisian tale of urban growth, change, and renewal,” praised a starred review on Booklist. “Overall, the riveting pictures will provide the main draw, but their creator’s terse, measured commentary invites readers to think longer thoughts about time’s passage and how past and present are linked.”
In the competitive world of book publishing, Fong has been fortunate to work with three main publishers throughout her career: Random House, Greenwillow Books (Harper Collins) and Union Square Kids (Hachette), which published “The Clock.” Harper Collins will be publishing her next book, set to come out in April 2026 and again set in Paris. Called “Claire and the Cathedral”, the book is about a little girl who visits Notre-Dame in Paris and discovers all the beautiful colors created by the cathedral’s stained glass windows.
Fong the Francophile had started working on the book before the cathedral was significantly damaged in a 2019 fire. “I was heartbroken and dumbfounded that something like that could happen,” said Fong. She was able to visit the newly reconstructed and reopened cathedral in October, “It was spectacular…it was so heartwarming to see that it could come back.” She is very happy that her book will celebrate the cathedral’s renewal.
On her recent trip to Paris, Fong came armed with a stack of her author copies of “The Clock”. She went to the Musée d’Orsay and spoke to the purchaser for the museum bookstore, who was so excited when she saw the cover that she nearly grabbed it out of her hands. By the time Fong got back to her hotel in the afternoon, the purchaser had already CC’d her an an order of books she’d placed for the museum.
“It was kind of like a dream, I really had to pinch myself,” said Fong, who has high hopes that her book will help kids visiting the museum to love and understand the clock as much as she does.
Playing her part to help foster a love of books, recently Fong helped snip the ribbon on the new Barnes & Noble bookstore in La Jolla. After the ceremony, she did a book signing with her collection of books, including “Hedgehog and the Log”, “The Little Cloud” and “When the Fog Rolled In,” about a lost puffin. Like 2023’s “When the Fog Rolled In”, “The Clock” has also gained recognition, recently being awarded the Eureka! Silver Medal by the California Reading Association.
When the new Barnes & Noble bookstore opened in La Jolla Max Amadeus Rocha, center, and his mother, Karla, left, were eager to meet children’s author Pam Fong and ask her to sign one of her picture books. (Roxana Popescu / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“It’s nice to be recognized. But for me it’s better that at Barnes & Noble, there were kids coming up to me and saying ‘I have your other books!’,” Fong said of meeting her young readers. “Those are the things I remember.”
“The Clock” is available at book sellers such as Barnes & Noble and on Amazon. To learn more visit pamfong.org