ands are often the setting for stories by the well-known English author Michael Morpurgo. Because of the Gulf Stream, there is a mild, almost subtropical climate, but the islands are also tossed by violent storms. Lighthouses with their beacons ensure that passing ships do not crash on the rocks in front of the islands. Until the middle of the last century these were kept going by lighthouse keepers who led a lonely life on the towers. Benjamin Postlethwaite, the hero in Morpurgo’s new children’s book, was one of them and a hundred years ago rescued the passengers of a sailing ship that was sailing from New York to England and capsized within sight of his lighthouse. Allen, the five-year-old hero of this story, and his mother are among the rescued, and Benjamin Postlethwaite takes them to safety on his lighthouse in his boat.
He’s a very special man, and all the walls of the lighthouse are full of pictures he painted. When he realizes that little Allen is admiring his pictures, he gives him a picture of a ship. It will be Allen’s most precious possession and he will keep it like treasure. When he was older, he wrote letters to the lighthouse keeper, but never got an answer. When Allen goes to boarding school, the art teacher recognizes and encourages his artistic talent, and his mother gets a job as a French teacher at the boarding school. When he has finished school, he decides to visit Benjamin. It turns out that his friend cannot read, but he has saved all of the letters. Everyone stays with him, teaches him to read, and they both paint their pictures of ships and the sea. “We talked, we fished, we read, we painted. We became good friends.”
They also care for an injured puffin until it can fly again. The beautiful bird remains loyal to its rescuers, keeps coming back and at the same time ensures that the decimated puffin colony grows again. But there is war, and one day Allen gets a draft notice and has to leave his friend and the lighthouse. He becomes a seaman and survives the Second World War.
When he returned to the Isles of Scilly and the lighthouse after the war, Benjamin was no longer a lighthouse keeper, but was called the “puffin keeper” and was also known as a painter beyond the islands. Allen marries and lives with his wife Clare and two children as a painter and writer together with Benjamin in the lighthouse. The headland with the lighthouse has become a puffin colony.
The special thing about this book about an unusual friendship, which Henning Ahrens has translated congenially into German, are the many great pictures by Benji Davies, who we know above all as a picture book illustrator, and which accompany the story throughout. (from 10 years and to read aloud)