Look again at Alastair’s diary entries. What themes, or major questions, arise? What does Alastair want? What do you think he needs?
What does the whale symbolize in this story? Recall its various appearances throughout the book, Alastair’s work on whale song, and what he writes about drowning. Why does the whale need to die at the end of the story, rather than just leave the waters around the island?
Extreme events—Alastair’s death, Squid’s pregnancy— change the family. What do you think would have happened to the characters in the absence of any definitive events? Think about a time in your life when it was hard to change the status quo, even though you knew it needed to be altered. What finally led to change?
What idea or lesson from this book can help you think about how you want to live your life? Consider your views on family, raising children, marriage, personal goals, etc.
Q: When did you develop an interest in writing? Did your teachers recognize your talent and encourage you?
A: My grade three teacher told my parents that I would grow up to be a writer. In later years, in junior high school and high school, creative writing class was my favorite part of school. I remember being praised but not encouraged. I was a very shy child, so it was intensely embarrassing if my stories were chosen to be read aloud, and excruciating if I had to read them myself.
In grade eleven or twelve, I volunteered to be a school correspondent for the neighborhood newspaper. But my first published story was so changed from the version I submitted that I never wrote another one. When I graduated from high school, though, I hoped to be a writer.
Q: In your acknowledgments you talk about Lucy Island as the inspiration for the setting of The Lightkeeper’s Daughter. What was your inspiration for the characters and story?
A: The first time I sailed to Lucy Island, there was a lightkeeper and his family living there. The last time, their house was just a stub of foundations poking up from burned and bulldozed ruins. It was like a different island, sad and somber, and it’s this one that the McCraes inhabit—with a different name so that the real and very happy lightkeepers won’t be mistaken for my fictional ones. The McCraes were inspired in part by the sense of loneliness and loss that lay thickly over Lucy then, and in part by the needs of the story. I gave each of them one strong desire, and their relationships arose naturally from the clashing of their different wants.
Q: You write “Alastair was good at everything because he only did the things that he was good at” (p. 101). How should we decide what to do, if it’s not simply the things we’re good at? Is there something you’re not good at that you enjoy?
A: It’s a bit of a Catch-22, isn’t it? You can never enjoy doing something you don’t do well, but if you do it badly long enough, you get good enough to enjoy it. There are many things I like to do now that were only painful at first. By never trying twice, Alastair limited himself to a very narrow range of interests.
Q: Tell us about your process. Some writers say that their best writing comes out of revising and editing, while others prefer the spontaneity of their first version. How do you work?
A: I love writing but don’t care much for rewriting. Once I’ve told a story, I tend to lose interest in it and want only to go on to the next one.
I used to start a novel knowing nothing of what would happen. I just began at the first page, wrote through to the last, and called the whole thing finished as soon as I reached the end. After many rejections, I realized I was doing something wrong. It’s my theory now (and I wonder sometimes if I didn’t just pick it up from someone else) that you can outline and write, or write and rewrite. But, really, it amounts to the same thing. A story that is started without an outline will become the outline, going through changes and revisions until it seems right.
Now I like to plan the story carefully and fully, going through it chapter by chapter until I know—for each of them—the beginning and the end, and most of what will happen in between. I like to know the characters, what they are like and how they talk. The writing always strays from the outline in places. But, like a new highway built beside an old one, they eventually rejoin.
Q: Do you have any personal experiences with whales? What is your connection to them, and why was it important to you to include the whale in the book?
A: This story really began with the whales. The very first thought that inspired it was to tell the songs that whales might sing to each other. Its title then, and nearly till the end, was The Singing of Whales. Several years passed from the day I started the first version to the day I finished the last, all during a time when I spent entire summers wandering the coast in a little sailboat. I often saw whales, and sometimes sought them out. I bought a hydrophone to listen to their voices in the water, and it was always incredibly moving to be near them. One time, we were overtaken by a pod of killer whales. We were going so slowly that they could have shot by, but instead they slowed as they passed. They surfaced right beside the boat and all around it, a big group of adults and children, and it seemed for a while that we were traveling with them. It was magical, really. The killer whales of the coast represent the ultimate in freedom to me, and it breaks my heart that they’re dying.
Q: Usually we think about parents sacrificing for their children. Yet, in a way, Alastair sacrifices his future for Murray’s when he agrees to stay on the island. Do you think that happens often in families? How do you decide what to sacrifice for someone or something you love?
A: I think children seldom make even small sacrifices for their parents. But when they’re older, and adults themselves, they often make huge ones, I think. It’s ironic that Alastair, by giving his father what he wants, almost guarantees that Murray can’t hang on to it. I can imagine that Alastair might have gone to school, studied whales, and returned to Lucy Island one day. I can imagine, too, that Squid would have stayed, and that Murray would have died a happy man on his own little island. But Alastair found that he had given up too much, and by doing it had doomed them all. If sacrifice has a limit, I have no idea what it is. But I can’t imagine giving up life for a country, or even for a tiny little island.
Q: In many ways, this story is a tragedy. The characters learn and change, but only through great pain and the death of Alastair. Did you consider other fates for Alastair?
A: For a time, Alastair did have a different fate—or at least the possibility of one. An earlier version of the story made it clear, at the end, that Alastair paddled away from the island in hope of reaching Vancouver. Whether he arrived or not wasn’t said. But it was unthinkable that Alastair would go on with his life without letting Squid, at least, know that he was still alive. So the ending was changed to be less ambiguous, and I think this one is better. But, yes, these characters became very real for me, and I thought about them for a long time afterward, often wondering if Alastair might have survived.
Q: At one point Hannah reminds Murray that “No man is an island” (p. 112). Do you agree? Do you identify with Murray’s desire?
A: Hannah, of course, is quoting the poet John Donne: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . .” I agree very much with that. The more firmly a person is connected to the mass of humanity, the better that person seems. At the same time, I understand Murray’s wish for a simple life in an idyllic place, free from the worries of the world. That he can’t have it, no matter how he tries, is a sad reality. Like most people, I think, I’m often less of an island than I’d wish, and sometimes more than I’d like.
Q: Why did you want to tell this story (particularly for a young adult audience)?
A: For a long time, I considered telling this story in a more straightforward way, beginning with Alastair’s birth and ending with his death. It would have been the same story, but very different. Trying to tell it as a series of memories was a puzzle that interested me through the planning and the writing. I wanted a sad story about people struggling for something they couldn’t quit
e reach, and settling for something close. That, to me, pretty well sums up what life is about.
BORROWED LIGHT
Anna Fienberg • 0-440-22876-X
Sixteen-year-old Callisto May feels a deep
connection to astronomy. She can name all the
moons on Jupiter and even tell you the
dimensions of the Big Red Spot. But she feels
completely alone on planet Earth. And now that
she’s pregnant, her loneliness is acute.
WHIRLIGIG
Paul Fleischman • 0-440-22835-2
In one terrible moment, Brent Bishop’s life
changes forever. He kills another teenager, Lea, in
a car crash. Lea’s mother asks one thing of Brent:
that he create four whirligigs from a picture of Lea
and set them up at the four corners of the United
States. And so Brent’s journey begins.
GHOST BOY
Iain Lawrence • 0-440-41668-X
Fourteen-year-old Harold Kline is an albino—an
outcast. When the circus comes to town, Harold
runs off to join it in hopes of discovering who he
is and what he wants in life.
THE YEAR WITHOUT MICHAEL
Susan Beth Pfeffer • 0-385-73120-5
Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good
people. But somewhere between home and the
softball field, sixteen-year-old Jody Chapman’s
younger brother disappeared. As hope fades and
her family falls apart, Jody makes a last desperate
attempt to hold them together.
readers circle
COUNTING STARS • David Almond
0-440-41826-7
With stories that shimmer and vibrate in the bright heat of memory, David Almond creates a glowing mosaic of his life growing up in a large, loving Catholic family in northeastern England.
HEAVEN EYES • David Almond
0-440-22910-3
Erin Law and her friends in the orphanage are labeled Damaged Children. They run away one night, traveling downriver on a raft. What they find on their journey is stranger than you can imagine.
KIT’S WILDERNESS •David Almond
0-440-41605-1
Kit Watson and John Askew look for the childhood ghosts of their long-gone ancestors in the mines of Stoneygate.
SECRET HEART •David Almond
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Joe’s mind is always somewhere else. He doesn’t fit in, and everybody laughs at him. And then a tattered circus comes to town, and a tiger comes for Joe. It leads him out into the night, and nothing in his world is ever the same again.
SKELLIG •David Almond
0-440-22908-1
Michael feels helpless because of his baby sister’s illness, until he meets a creature called Skellig.
BEFORE WE WERE FREE •Julia Alvarez
0-440-23784-X
Under a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, young Anita lives through a fight for freedom that changes her world forever.
BECOMING MARY MEHAN: TWO NOVELS •Jennifer Armstrong
0-440-22961-8
Set against the events of the American Civil War, The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan depicts an Irish immigrant girl and her family, struggling to find their place in the war-torn country. Mary Mehan Awake takes up Mary’s story after the war, when she must begin a journey of renewal.
FORGOTTEN FIRE •Adam Bagdasarian
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In 1915, Vahan Kenderian is living a life of privilege when his world is shattered by the Turkish-Armenian war.
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS •Ann Brashares
0-385-73058-6
Over a few bags of cheese puffs, four girls decide to form a sisterhood and take the vow of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The next morning, they say goodbye. And then the journey of the Pants, and the most memorable summer of their lives, begin.
THE RAG AND BONE SHOP •Robert Cormier
0-440-22971-5
A seven-year-old girl is brutally murdered. A twelve-year-old boy named Jason was the last person to see her alive—except, of course, for the killer. Unless Jason is the killer.
DR. FRANKLIN’S ISLAND •Ann Halam
0-440-23781-5
A plane crash leaves Semi, Miranda, and Arnie stranded on a tropical island, totally alone. Or so they think. Dr. Franklin is a mad scientist who has set up his laboratory on the island, and the three teens are perfect subjects for his frightening experiments in genetic engineering.
WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN •Kimberly Willis Holt
0-440-23841-2
Toby’s small, sleepy Texas town is about to get a jolt with the arrival of Zachary Beaver, billed as the fattest boy in the world. Toby is in for a summer unlike any other—a summer sure to change his life.
THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE OF LIARS •Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson
0-440-23852-8
Surrounded by superficiality, infidelity, and lies, Robin, a self-described chunk, isn’t sure what to make of her hunky neighbor’s sexual advances, or of the attention paid her by a new boy in town who seems to notice more than her body.
GHOST BOY •Iain Lawrence
0-440-41668-X
Fourteen-year-old Harold Kline is an albino—an outcast. When the circus comes to town, Harold runs off to join it in hopes of discovering who he is and what he wants in life. Is he a circus freak or just a normal guy?
THE LIGHTKEEPER’S DAUGHTER •Iain Lawrence
0-385-73127-2
Imagine growing up on a tiny island with no one but your family. For Squid McCrae, returning to the island after three years away unleashes a storm of bittersweet memories, revelations, and accusations surrounding her brother’s death.
LORD OF THE NUTCRACKER MEN •Iain Lawrence
0-440-41812-7
In 1914, Johnny’s father leaves England to fight the Germans in France. With each carved wooden soldier he sends home, the brutality of war becomes more apparent. Soon Johnny fears that his war games foretell real battles and that he controls his father’s fate.
GATHERING BLUE •Lois Lowry
0-440-22949-9
Lamed and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously taken to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.
THE GIVER •Lois Lowry
0-440-23768-8
Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices, until Jonas is given an opportunity that will change his world forever.
SHADES OF SIMON GRAY •Joyce McDonald
0-440-22804-2
Simon is the ideal teenager—smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon’s car crashes into a tree and he slips into a coma, another portrait of him begins to emerge.
HARMONY •Rita Murphy
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Power is coursing through Harmony—the power to affect the universe with her energy. This is a frightening gift for a girl who has always hated being different, and Harmony must decide whether to hide her abilities or embrace the consequences— good and bad—of her full strength.
BOTH SIDES NOW •Ruth Pennebaker
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A compelling look at breast cancer through the eyes of a mother and daughter. Liza must learn a few life lessons from her mother, Rebecca, about the power of family.
HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER •Mollie Poupeney
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As she matures from a feisty tomboy of seven to a spirited young woman of fourteen, Maggie discovers that the only constant in her life of endless new homes and new faces is her ever-emerging sense of herself.
THE BABOON KING •Anton Quintana
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Neither Morengáru’s father’s Masai tribe nor his mother’s Kikuyu tribe accepts him. Banished from bot
h tribes, Morengáru encounters a baboon troop and faces a fight with the simian king.
HOLES •Louis Sachar
0-440-22859-X
Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake. But there’s more than character improvement going on at the camp—the warden is looking for something.
STARGIRL •Jerry Spinelli
0-375-82233-X
Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” Then they turn on her.
SHABANU: DAUGHTER OF THE WIND •Suzanne Fisher Staples
0-440-23856-0
Life is both sweet and cruel to strong-willed young Shabanu, whose home is the windswept Cholistan Desert of Pakistan. She must reconcile her duty to her family and the stirrings of her own heart in this Newbery Honor–winning modern-day classic.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY •Janet Tashjian
0-440-23792-0
Josh Swensen’s virtual alter ego, Larry, becomes a huge media sensation. While it seems as if the whole world is trying to figure out Larry’s true identity, Josh feels trapped inside his own creation.
MEMORIES OF SUMMER •Ruth White
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In 1955, thirteen-year-old Lyric describes her older sister Summer’s descent into mental illness, telling Summer’s story with humor, courage, and love.
about the author
IAIN LAWRENCE studied journalism in Vancouver, British Columbia, and worked for small newspapers in the northern part of the province. He settled on the coast, living first in the port city of Prince Rupert and then at a remote radio-transmitter site that could be reached only by boat or helicopter. He now lives on the Gulf Islands. An avid sailor, Iain Lawrence wrote two nonfiction books about his travels on the coast before turning to children’s novels. The Lightkeeper’s Daughter is set on the north coast, where the remains of a lighthouse stand on an island very much like the fictional Lizzie.
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