Smout and the Lighthouse: A Story of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Jane Yolen, John Patrick Pazdziora, Lyndsay Roberts Rayne (Illustrator)

Overview

Discover the unexpected beginnings of author Robert Louis Stevenson in this story about following your dreams.

Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's letters and life, this book imagines the author as a child with dreams of becoming a writer. As he and his father visit one of the many lighthouses along the Scottish coast that were built by their family, young Louis begins composing a story in his head—one with storms, shipwrecks, and pirates—that will one day be published as Treasure Island.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807574843
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	09/07/2023
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jane Yolen is the author of more than 400 books, including How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? Her works, which range from picture books to novels for adults, have won an assortment of awards, among them the Golden Kite and the National Jewish Book Award. She lives in Massachusetts in the winter and Scotland in the summer. She writes every day.

John Patrick Pazdziora is project assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences of The University of Tokyo. He holds a PhD in English from the University of St Andrews and researches 19th-century Scottish literature. He is the author of Haunted Childhoods in George MacDonald.

Lyndsay Roberts Rayne graduated from the Cambridge School of Art with a master’s degree in children’s book illustration. A psychotherapist and art therapist, she balances her time between her private practice and her illustration work. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her husband and their dogs.

Editorial Reviews

"A glimpse of warm ties between a child who sees pirates and a parent who sees the light."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2023-07-26
A father and son come to terms with their differences in this biographical anecdote.

His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have been builders of lighthouses, but young Robert—affectionately nicknamed “Smout”—has no interest in taking up the Stevenson family trade. An aspiring writer, he dreams of “giants and knights in armor, hidden treasure, and pirates. Definitely pirates!” Struggling to keep up on an inspection tour along the coastal moors of Fife, he asks for a pirate yarn. His father stops posing leading questions about geology and engineering and obliges with a rousing tale of buccaneers dashed to bits on a rock because they stole its warning bell. As Yolen affirms in her afterword, that child indeed went on, with his family’s grudging support, to become a famous writer. But she also commends the Stevenson lighthouses, many of which, as shown on an appended map, are still active around Scotland’s rugged coast (and, she notes, the world). Using layers of cut paper, Rayne effectively alternates nautical scenes of castaways and corsairs with depictions of a small child and his cloaked father, both white like all the figures here, climbing lighthouse steps, crossing expanses of choppy water and rocky, windswept shores, and at last going off amicably together, hand in hand. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A glimpse of warm ties between a child who sees pirates and a parent who sees the light. (reading list) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews