Skip to main content

Kate's Light: Kate Walker at Robbins Reef Lighthouse

By

 


Kate's Light: Kate Walker at Robbins Reef Lighthouse
Written by Elizabeth Spires
Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully
Holiday House.2021. Biography

Kate Kaird, an immigrant who left Germany in 1882 moved to America with her young son Jacob and eventually became one of the first lighthouse keepers on the Eastern Seaboard. Her journey began when she met and married John Walker and they moved to Robbins Reef lighthouse in New York harbor. Her husband was given the job as lighthouse keeper and she became the assistant keeper. At first she hated the lighthouse and she wasn't sure she could live in such a lonely place but she eventually adapted and learned to love the peace and quiet of the lighthouse. When her husband died she convinced the lighthouse board to let her stay on until a man could be hired. Four years later she was hired as permanent keeper making her one of the first women to be put in charge of a lighthouse. Kate took care of the lighthouse and lived there for 33 years and rescued more than fifty people.

I love lighthouses and I'm fascinated with the stories of lighthouse keepers. The gorgeous watercolor and ink illustrations really capture the beauty of the water and sky and create beautiful scenes full of color and expression. I also enjoyed reading the additional information at the end about Kate. This is a very distinctive book that highlights an unknown heroine who continued to "mind the light" something her husband encouraged her to do. A great book to read during Women's History Month.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more