A new man has recently moved to a cottage near the "castle" lighthouse. The kids call him "Spooky Joe" because he doesn't socialize much and seems cranky. I have to commend the author for NOT making him a stereotype. He shows some character growth at the end. Kipper Briggs, the village bully boy also shows some character growth as the war affects his life. He starts off as a typical bully and of course there's a reason why and Pet reflects on how he could be different if x was different- a typical plot device in novels for tweens. Mrs. Baron the headmistress is a typical grande dame of village society. She's firm and tries to be fair. Her character arc surprised me but didn't. Her son Michael is everyone's darling. Handsome, smart and friendly, Michael endears himself to a lot of people, especially girls. I was surprised by his plot and completely missed the clue. Twelve-year-old Petra lives in a lighthouse on the coast of England, so close to Europe that she can see right across to France on a clear day. When the war begins, some of the villagers—her neighbors for her entire life—behave abominably to Petra’s family. Her German-born mother is accused of treason and sent to an internment camp, and though Petra is confident of Mutti’s innocence, someone has been sending state secrets to the Nazis. Could it be that Petra’s nearest and dearest aren’t what they seem? No one in her family is acting normally. The stakes seem to rise slowly, coming to a breaking point as Petra’s personal tragedies intertwine with the grim reality of the Dunkirk evacuation. The (historically accurate) increasing maltreatment of the town’s German-British and Italian-British families increases Petra’s sense of dislocation in her previously cozy village setting (characters are all white). Strange’s deft hand with the had-I-but-known flavor of foreshadowing maintains a beautifully eerie, slightly gothic tone (occasionally at the expense of a believable 12-year-old voice). Can the family survive the horrors of war? You can choose your country or your family, you can not choose both.

Determined to discover the restore her family’s good name, Petra has to overcome her timidity and discover the truth. For good measure, Strange also blends the mysterious local legend of the Daughters of Stone, ancient coastal standing stones, into her potent mix. De 12-jarige Pet woont samen met haar ouders en zus in een vuurtoren, die ze in gedachten 'ons kasteel' noemt. Dit is het perfecte decor voor de avontuurlijke Pet, die graag rondzwerft door de verborgen tunnels en opgroeit met griezelige verhalen over legendarische zeemonsters. Aan haar zorgeloze bestaan komt abrupt een einde wanneer de Tweede Wereldoorlog uitbreekt. In eerste instantie lijkt dit nog ver weg, maar algauw neemt de spanning in het gezin toe. Pet is vastberaden om erachter te komen welke geheimen het gezin voor haar verborgen houdt. Coffee house Caffè Nero has announced the 16-strong shortlist for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, recognising the outstanding books of the past 12...Verdict: An evocative, richly rendered historical fiction full of depth of characters and plot (9/10) I learned so much from this book and felt the story many times. Then I would close the book and dream of the lighthouse and everyone in it.

A weird thing happens to me when I am frightened. I freeze. Like a startled rabbit. My whole body stiffens and I can't move at all. People use the word petrified to describe feeling afraid, but it really means much more than that - it means being so terrified that you cannot move a muscle; it means being turned to stone." Ik houd van vuurtorens en van de Engelse kust en van verhalen over de Tweede Wereldoorlog, dus dit kon niet missen! Het verhaal van de familie van de twaalfjarige hoofdpersoon Petra valt samen met gebeurtenissen uit de oorlog enerzijds en mythische verhalen over zeemonsters en vergane schepen anderzijds. Daarbij een mooie balans tussen spanning en meeleven met de personages; op sommige momenten is het zó zielig en tegelijk wilde ik doorlezen om te weten hoe het zat en zou aflopen. An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment.

The many mysteries were riveting. Pet is a relatable young girl, and her journey from the shy, quiet one who felt small and insignificant, to the brave, determined heroine is inspiring. Lucy Strange creates an interesting story that combines myth with actual World War II history. I loved the setting of the Castle, since just a few weeks before reading this I was able to visit and go up into an old lighthouse for the first time. Lucy captured the atmosphere beautifully and it was easy to imagine the incredible views Petra got to draw every day. I did learn something new about the time in this story and that was that there was more destruction and more lives lost than I expected. I get my inspiration from lots of different places. I often begin with a work of art – a book, a painting or a piece of music – these can be wonderful starting points to inspire ideas. The Secret of Nightingale Wood began with a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Our Castle by the Sea started with this beautiful painting of the lantern room in the Belle Tout lighthouse, by Eric Ravilious…

England is at war. Growing up in a lighthouse, Pet’s world has been one of storms, secret tunnels and stories about sea monsters. But now the clifftops are a terrifying battleground, and her family is torn apart. This is the story of a girl who is small, afraid and unnoticed. A girl who freezes with fear at the enemy planes ripping through the skies overhead. A girl who is somehow destined to become part of the strange, ancient legend of the Daughters of Stone … People say that the Daughters of Stone stand here on our clifftop as a warning to those who sail these dangerous waters. If you close your eyes and listen very carefully, you might just be able to hear their sad, sweet, ghostly song . . .’ The slow dismantling of Petra’s faith in her loved ones adds a delicious instability to the growing unease of this WWII thriller I loved this book so much, it is really well written and it made me feel as if the story was really happening! One of the characters I found really interesting was a man that in the book they call “Pa”, because he is in charge of the lighthouse so I learned that running a lighthouse can be a very important and dangerous job during a war. I also learnt that hundreds of ordinary, British people sailed from Dover to Dunkirk to save thousands of retreating soldiers. I would defiantly recommend this book to other pupils that love reading and are interested in history.

Lighthouses for younger readers

The Secret of Nightingale Wood has been a huge success . How is Our Castle by the Sea similar to The Secret of Nightingale Wood? How is it different? What advice would you give to teachers about how to develop reading for pleasure in their classrooms and schools?

This is a brilliantly evocative and controlled narrative. Lucy Strange writes her characters so convincingly that readers invest in their every emotion, hope and fear. Readers will come away feeling like they have walked right alongside Pet, experiencing all the sights and sounds of wartime England as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl trying to make sense of it all. As soon as the main editing of one book is finished I start to get excited about the next book (I’ve got about three books in my head at the moment, fizzing around like frustrated fireworks – it’s very distracting . . . ) Because Nightingale Wood was so well-received by readers, I suppose I was aware when I was writing Our Castle that people were likely to compare the two, so I wanted it to be a worthy follow-up, but of course I wanted it to be a good book anyway – and special too, in its own unique way. The hardest thing about Nightingale Wood was the editing process – we cut 46,000 words in total. I didn’t want to go through this again with Our Castle, so I tried to keep things tighter and more focused as I worked my way through. It was definitely a different writing process! Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark...I looked at Mags and she was frozen, her mouth hanging open. For a moment, I thought perhaps she had been turned to stone too, but then she blinked and swallowed. Pa was still talking, though his voice was very, very soft now – just a whisper. I always tell budding young writers that inspiration can come from all sorts of places… Daydream. Listen to conversations on buses, and gaze out of the window on trains. Notice things that other people miss, and always keep a notebook handy. Read lots of good books – and some bad books too so that you learn the difference! Be brave with your writing – make bold language choices. Make sure everything you write feels honest. Never forget your reader: your reader is the most important person in the world. “Our Castle by the Sea is about: Smaller bookworms will love The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage, with the ingenious basket-and-pulley delivery system – and hordes of greedy seagulls! I have always loved lighthouses. I don’t know if it’s the quirky, architectural novelty of them, the romantic, windswept locations or the thrill of the spiral staircase that goes up, up, up into the sky, but they hold a very special place in my imaginative world. I really liked Petra (or Pet, the main character) because she was very determined to find out all the secrets, which she found to do with her family, which she had no clue about. She also thought a lot about her family and cared for them a lot. Petra was also very brave. I didn’t really like Kipper Briggs at the start, who was quite a rude boy and a bit showy-off, but in the middle/end part of the story deep down he was a kind person and a helpful one. In the end when Kipper Briggs started being nice the really kind boy (or so we thought) Michael was really helping the Germans with his mother and turned out to be really cruel and rude.