Lighthouse: A Story of Remembrance
About this book
A moving story of love and remembrance — for anyone who has ever lost a loved one.
Young Sarah can't sleep following her grandpa's funeral, so she wakes up her dad in the middle of the night. He agrees to take her where Grandpa used to take him as a boy — the lighthouse. On the way there, Sarah and her dad drink coffee and eat donuts — just as Grandpa would have liked. When they climb to the top of the lighthouse, Sarah throws a flower out to sea in her grandpa's memory.
Inspired after a reading in Antigonish, when a little girl gave Robert Munsch a drawing of a lighthouse at night with a car driving up to it, Lighthouse is a tender story about honouring those who have passed and keeping their memory alive. Janet Wilson's detailed and dramatic illustrations add a warm and gentle touch to a sensitive topic.
Behind the scenes
In 1993, after Robert Munsch was done telling stories at a theatre in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, he found a picture of a lighthouse lying on the stage. On the back it said, “Sarah Gillis, Antigonish.” He liked the picture a lot and he made up a story about it on the way to his next show. The story was about a kid going to a lighthouse after her grandfather’s funeral. Then Munsch called the library in Antigonish and asked if they could find a girl named Sarah who had given him a picture. He figured that she probably liked to use the library. Antigonish is a very small town, and it turned out that the librarian had a good idea who the kid was. She called up Miriam Gillis and said, “Is Patricia sometimes called Sarah?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Gillis. “Her name is Sarah Patricia.” And when she asked her daughter if she had made Robert Munsch a picture, Patricia, who was also called Sarah, said, “Yes, I made one. I just left it ’cause I was too shy to give it to him.” So Munsch wrote to Patricia and her mom, and they wrote back. Her mom said that Patricia had been very close to her grandfather who had died a year before. This was very strange because Munsch did not know that Patricia’s grandfather had died when he made up the story. A long time later, Scholastic wanted to make this story into a book, so Munsch wrote to Patricia, who was in high school, and asked if she wanted to be the kid in the book. The lighthouse in the book is Cape George Lighthouse, and the house is Patricia’s grandparents’ house on Cape Breton Island.Reviews
Praise for Lighthouse:
"Lighthouse begs to be compared to Munsch's classic best-seller and a personal favourite, Love You Forever." — CM Magazine
Awards:
- Canadian Children's Book Centre, Our Choice, 2004.
- Winner, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award Gold Award, 2003.
- Finalist, Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award, 2004.
- Ruth Schwartz Award for Excellence in Children's Literature, 2004.
