Nana's Book Library

• Age: 7-10+
• Particulars (Out of 5):  
  • Historical value:  *****  
  • Positive role models *****   
  • Inappropriate language:  None.
  • Sexual references:  None.   

Reminder: Nana’s Books are rated G.  Anyone could read them, or listen to them being read aloud.

What’s better than a story of a young girl who is brave and good?  A true story of a young girl who’s brave and good!  The year is 1856.  Abbie Burgess is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper on Matinicus Rock, off the coast of Maine.  Her mother is sick and needs medicine.  The family is running low on food – for them and for their three chickens – and desperately needs supplies, including oil for the lamps.  

            The only way off the island is the family’s small boat, and only Papa is a good enough sailor to make this trip.  There’s no Weather Channel, no way to know that a huge storm – actually, series of storms – is coming.  On a clear day, Papa sails to the nearest town to get supplies.  “But what if you don’t get back today?” Abbie asks him.  “Who will take care of the lights?”  Papa smiled.  “You will, Abbie.”  There’s nobody else to do it:  “Mama is too sick to do it.  Your sisters are too little.  You must keep the lights burning, Abbie.  Many ships count on our lighthouses.”  

            A storm blows in, and Papa can’t get home that night.  Abbie puts on her coat and climbs up the lighthouse steps.  She looks out onto an ominous sea:  “The waves were like big hills.  The wind blew rain at the windows.  She could not even see Matinicus Island.  She knew Papa could not sail back.  Abbie was afraid.  She wished her brother, Benjy, were home.  But he was away fishing.  What if she could not light the lamps?”

            But she does light them – all the lamps in the two lighthouse towers.  Out at sea, a ship’s captain sees the lights and veers safely away from the dangerous rocks.  All night long, Abbie climbs up and down the steps, scrapes the ice off the windows, and keeps the lights burning.  In the morning, she blows out each light, trims each wick, cleans each lamp, puts in more oil, and finally goes to bed.

            She does this for four long weeks, through one storm after another.  One morning, the rising seawater runs under the door of their house.  Abbie runs through the incoming water and saves her three hens – which is good, because after a while, all they have to eat is eggs.  So she saves her mother and sisters, along with the chickens and the ships at sea!  

            This book is available on Amazon, new and used, and on eBay and Abebooks.

©Janet Farrar Worthington

Note:  I am an Amazon affiliate, so if you do click a link and buy a book, I will theoretically make a small amount of money, but I’m just starting this thing, so I don’t even know how that works.   Still, full disclosure, etc