Book to Share: Stories by Sea; a Lighthouse Library's Journey, by Jessica Iwanski

Nearly every morning in spring, summer, and fall, my husband and I start our day stretched out on a blanket on the beach, staring across a stretch of the Long Island Sound to the island and lighthouse that guards the shore. I have discovered, in my middle age, that very few things set my spirits to rights the way the seashore can. Maybe it’s the steadiness of the water; the simultaneous changeability and reliability; the sheer beauty. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve always lived near beaches, so they feel like home. Science points to some mysterious blend of ions and oxygen and trace minerals—I don’t know, I haven’t read the studies deeply, I just believe them. 

Now, give me a beach with a lighthouse—ah, I’m in heaven. Somehow tie books into the picture, and Dante would have to bump me up another level in Paradise. 

I say all this because it’s only fair to point out that the book I’m about to review could have been made just for me. Maybe its author, Jessica Iwanski, somehow got into my brain and pulled out all the elements that would have me running to my bookstore to grab a copy. Or maybe—as I suspect—many, many people love books and beaches and lighthouses and literature just as much as I do. If you’re one of them, I found your next favorite story.

Like most masterful picture books, Stories by Sea; a Lighthouse Library’s Journey has a simple premise. It’s about the traveling libraries that would be carried by boat from lighthouse to lighthouse in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. As lighthouse keepers and their families were often confined to their island homes for months at a time, these traveling libraries provided much-needed knowledge, culture, and entertainment—as well as connection with the other lighthouse dwellers who had enjoyed them before. A journal traveled along with the books, for the borrowers to make notes and requests regarding both the books and their lives.

As a historical tidbit, that’s a pretty interesting little factoid. But factoids don’t make good books unless they’re in the hands of very talented story tellers. Jessica Iwanski, and the illustrator, Angela C. Hawkins, took what could be a glossed over paragraph in a history book and turned it into a beautiful, engaging story. The words and the pictures work together in a seemingly effortless way (though I’m sure it took plenty of effort!) to tell the reader of the individuals and families (extra points for big family representation!) whose lives were touched by the books they were brought. I finished the story not only knowing more about lighthouse libraries, but knowing more about how their readers would have lived. The story brings out themes that left me choked up, oh so subtly making the parallel of how both lighthouses and stories can be lights in darkness, beacons of hope to those who encounter them. 

I’m a homeschool mom, so I can’t help automatically imagining what a lovely “unit study” companion Stories by Sea would be to Sophie Blackall’s Hello, Lighthouse, joined by Anna Rose Johnson’s The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry for the older members of the family. All three books are not only about lighthouses, they all convey deep hope and joy in a way only the best books accomplish. Stories by Sea comes out September 22, but you can pre-order it now!