Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll

📙📙📙📙out of 5  
Age Range: Upper KS2 .
Themes:  Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery, Bravery, Leadership, Belonging.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2017
ISBN Number: 978-0-571-32758-4 
Break Down: 374 pages split into 25 chapters varying between 5 and 12 pages in length.

Blurb: We weren't supposed to be going to the pictures that night... not when German bombs had been falling like pennies from a jar.
FEBRUARY, 1941

A bomb blast...
a chance encounter...
her mothers coat.
This is all Olive can remember of the night her sister Sukie went missing. With London unsafe, Olive and her brother are evacuated to the Devonshire coast to stay with a mysterious lighthouse keeper.
There, Olive must solve a mystery of her own: a strange coded note which seems to link Sukie to Devon, and to something dark and impossibly dangerous.

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. When I first picked it up in the bookshop I admit to being a bit sceptical about yet another book based in WW2. However I feel it is a new story and very well written. It raises questions for children and adults to think about and gives an ever so slightly different perspective on the war and those living at the time.
It is well written with a plot line that keeps you reading.

Brief synopsis (for those teachers/parents who don't have time to read it - SPOILERS!):

• A beautiful story based in WW2 showing a different perspective. 
• The story starts in London and after being caught in a air raid trying to keep an eye on her sisters suspicious behaviour, Olive - the main character is injured. 
• When she wakes in the hospital she finds out her sister is missing and that she and her brother are being evacuated from London to the seaside village of Budmouth in Devon. 
• The two children meet Ester on the train to Devon and they are far from friends at this point. 
• In Budmouth, Olive and her brother Cliff do their best to fit and and make themselves useful. 
• They are housed with Queenie the local postmistress and shop owner, however one day they are moved to the lighthouse to make room for Ester. Ester is a kindertransport child, this means she has been evacuated to England from Austria for her own safety, as she and her family are Jews. 
• However it seems the local residents are doing more than their bit for the war effort as they plan to smuggle a boatful of refugees to the small village. 
• It ends up being down to Olive and Ester saving the day and bringing the boat safely into shore.

Teaching ideas: 

•  This book would work particularly well as part of a WW2 topic or read in preparation of a WW2 topic.
• I think exploring diary/journal writing would work really well here, the children could keep a diary as either Olive or Cliff adding to it as the story progresses. I would encourage pupils to explore how the characters are feeling and to reflect their mood in thier writing. 
• Letter writing could be interesting to explore for similar reasons. In the book what Olive writes to her mum and how she is actually feeling are completely different.  Some ideas for WW2 letter writing:

                   - On a day when dressed as evacuees (in their shorts, caps, brown paper wrapped gas mask boxes over their shoulder), sat on chairs/stools down the centre of the hall (as if they had just arrived), the children were all given  a piece of paper, a pencil and book to lean on to write their first letter home. A teacher friend of mine worked in a school where the children on their first topic day dressed as evacuees and were able to take a train to a hall space in a partner school - the children commented how strange it felt to leave their school behind and how they could imagine having to leave places they know and arrive somewhere strange.
                   - Writing home from the trenches - I have done this by turning the tables on their side so that the children lie on their stomachs or crouched to write their letters. The work they produced was genuinely heart wrenching. I certainly don't believe this was down to the classroom set up alone, however the children said it helped.
                   - Some of the children got stuck into the letter writing in the trenches and wrote replies from the soilders families in their free-writing time. There was even a 'mystery' letter left in the role play corner (by a child) which a couple of the children wrote back to. 

• It would be great to read another text based in WW2 (perhaps a Michael Morpurgo) from another perspective e.g. a soilders perspective and compare how the texts represent the war and how the experience of war was similar/different for different people e.g. evacuees, parents of evacuees, people taking in evacuees, people who had to flee countries already invaded, those trying to help, soilders and soilders families. What opinions do these people have about the war and how it is effecting their life? 

The Teaching Booth: https://theteachingbooth.wordpress.com/2017/06/30/letters-from-the-lighthouse-teaching-ideas/ have shared free resources/ideas for using this book here:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/letters-from-the-lighthouse-scheme-of-work-11663723
I particularly like the chapter by chapter approach. 

Other World War themed books:

• Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
• Anne Frank's Diary by Anne Frank
• Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
• Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
• War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
• Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
• The Boy In Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
• Friend or Foe by Michael Morpurgo
• Hero on a bicycle by Shirley Hughes

There are so many ideas for teaching WW2 - at some point I will try to create a topic web of ideas and add it here.

If you have any ideas you'd like to share with others, please feel free to leave a comment.