Review #30: The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter by Arielle North Olson

Title:Olson, Arielle North. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter. Mystic Seaport ,Museum of America and the Sea. 2004. 32 pages. Tr. $15.95. ISBN 978-0-939510-92-4

Genre: Historical Fiction
Reading Level/Interest Level: 3.1/ Grades K-3 per Titlewave. My recommendation : Grades 2 -4
Similar Titles: The Salem Witch Trials by Jane Yolen and Heidi Elisabet Yolen Stemple

Another in my series of “Picture books for tweens” reviews, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter is based on the true story of a family that moves to a very small, rocky, barren island in Maine when the father takes a job as the lighthouse keeper. The young girl, Miranda, wonders how this new place will ever become home when she can’t even plant a garden, as the wind and sea has washed away all the soil. Not to be deterred in finding something joyful about her new home, Miranda relishes spending time with her father, who teaches her how to tend to the lighthouse for the safety of all those at sea.

As winter wears on during their first year, they begin to run out of food, and despite the oncoming storms, the father sets out for the shore, where they had lived on his mother’s farm, to bring back supplies to sustain his wife and child, saying he would be back the following night, and to keep the lights burning at night. However, fierce cold, snow and wind is brought by the sea, the storms so great that her father cannot make the crossing.

Determined to keep her promise to her father, and ensure his safe return, Miranda diligently scrapes ice from the outside lamp room windows and lights the oil lamps every night, cleaning the lenses to maximize the light, night after night, over the span of more than 3 weeks while the storms rage on. Desperately worried for her father, she and her mother try to pass the time, with their meager supplies, by finishing odd jobs around the rocky island, until the sea becomes deafening as it crashes against the lighthouse and seeps under the doors as Miranda becomes sick and weaker from exposure. Despite her illness, Miranda still rushes into the freezing sea to save her pet hens from a watery grave, while her mother must conquer her fear of heights to help Miranda tend the lighthouse while she is ill, the only thing they can do to help speed the lighthouse keeper’s return home.  But can he make it home it home through the fierce sea before the last of their food disappears or will the sea claim them for its own?

 

As a staple tale of the Maine coast, where living with the dangers and bounty of the cold and sea has been a way of life for hundreds of years, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, provides just enough suspense to keep the reader turning the pages  with illustrations that are absolutely necessary to accurately describe just how bleak and barren this kind of life can be, but also, the importance of family, what kind of hope and a feeling of purpose it can bestow and how the spirit can triumph through the gravest of circumstance in an ange appropriate manner. Though it is only 32 pages, they are a long 32 pages, given the extended width of the book and the large volume of type on each page, making it easily seem more like a small chapter book, than a picture book.  This is why, in my opinion, and also why I agree with our local librarian’s decision to label it as such, this is a Juvenile/tween title, instead of  being a typically labelled -E- book.

I am beyond frustrated of the general opinion that picture books cannot be marketed, published, or of interest to tweens unless they are reading  down. Often publishers , librarians and teachers,can fail to take into account the maturity of the reader needed to handle certain concepts,  story lengths, plot lines, and advanced vocabulary. Too frequently is it simply labeled as an –E- book and shelved away with titles meant for preschool to first graders because a title has plenty of beautiful illustrations, which honestly makes me wonder if there was a similar fight when Hugo Cabret was released. Then again, perhaps because of its great length, it probably wasn’t even an issue. Still, while my first grader, as a more mature advanced reader, would find this book entertaining, there is no way it would have held her attention in previous years, if not for the length of the story than because of the sense of fear the uncertainty of survival would instill.

All in all, this is a great introduction to historical fiction, as well as a transitional book(get it out of your head right now that a tween book has to be devoid of illustrations!)  and will appeal to the younger 2 or 3 grades of the tween set. The beautiful water color illustrations accurately represent both the bleak starkness of the Maine coast, but also the colorful promise of hope and life. Do not discount it as a tween title because of the binding and the multitude of pictures! You would be doing yourself, and your children, a great disservice indeed. Teach them that their tenacity and boundless spirit can be channeled into causes great than themselves and that there is no greater motivation than the importance and safety of family.