by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 03, 2010

"The Sea Chest" is a true story - sort of. An author's note at the end of the book explains that although it's a work of fiction (set on a fictitious island), it's based on a real legend about a Maine lighthouse and a severe storm which struck the Atlantic in the mid-1870s. The author researched the story with local historians, who attribute its origins to a novel written in 1900. The book opens by acknowledging "many librarians and historians who assisted me in my historical research."

The book opens with an italicized description which sets the scene for an 80-year-old memory. ("City lights flicker in the dusk like winking fireflies...") The narrator vividly remembers a childhood as the only child of a Maine lighthouse keeper. She harvests the hens' eggs, watches for supply boats, and is home-schooled by her mother. And her father worries for the ships at sea on one icy, windy night...

Author Toni Buzzeo does a good job of writing a description of the ferocious storm. The wind "shrieked", and the waves were "colossal", hurling against the rocky shore and tossing "churning foam" to batter their windows.  But the feel of the storm also arrives through the book's illustrations, as the mother and daughter watch with heavily shadowed faces.  It's a black night through their window, with fierce swirls of white wind over an indistinct lighthouse in the background.

Mary Grandpre created the book's evocative illustrations, and they give the book a dark mystery. She was also the illustrator for J. K. Rowling's famous Harry Potter books, but "The Sea Chest" was the first picture book where she used oil paintings. She draws the sky of the next morning with a calm and almost magical orange. And seagulls bank over the beach as the girl and her father discover a strange bundle.

The legend says that a lighthouse keeper discovered a bundle of feather mattresses tied together. At the center of the bundle was a chest - and inside the chest was a little baby girl. A note was attached to the girl - from her parents, the captain of the doomed ship and his wife. It explained that they were entrusting their infant "into God's hands". The baby is adopted by the lighthouse keeper, and given the name "Seaborne."

In this picture book, the lighthouse keeper and his daughter hear a cry that's coming from inside the bundle. They untie the ropes, and discover a baby whose face and fingers are purple from the cold. It's wrapped in a quilt, as they stare into the face of the tiny new stranger.

And the lighthouse keeper's daughter hums a cradle song...

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