Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie

Summary

Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie is a short easy-reader history book about Abbie Burgess, the teenage daughter of the lighthouse keeper on Matinicus Rock, a bare island far out in the sea off the coast of Maine. In January 1856 Abbie's mother is sick, the family is running low on food and on oil for the lamps, and Captain Burgess must sail his small boat to the mainland town of Rockland for supplies and medicine. Before he goes he puts Abbie in charge of the lights in the island's two lighthouse towers and tells her to keep them burning. Soon after he leaves, a great winter storm comes up and keeps him from sailing back. Day after day Abbie cares for her sick mother and her younger sisters, and night after night she climbs the towers to fill the lamps with oil, trim the wicks and scrape the ice from the windows so that ships at sea can see the light. The family's three hens, Hope, Patience and Charity, are almost lost when huge waves wash over the rock; Abbie runs out to bring them to safety and is nearly caught by a wave herself. As the sea floods the island, the family takes shelter in one of the towers. Food runs short and Abbie grows very tired, but the lights never go out. After about four weeks the storm ends and Captain Burgess comes home. He tells Abbie that every night he looked across the water from the mainland, saw the lights burning, and so knew his family was all right. The story is told in short sentences for children reading on their own, with watercolor pictures by Peter E. Hanson of the rock, the towers and the gray winter sea. Carolrhoda Books published it in 1985 in its On My Own series, with an author's note on the real Abbie, and it was chosen as a Reading Rainbow feature book.

Top Lessons

• Faithful when no one is watching

  Captain Burgess gives Abbie one job, to keep the lights burning, and then he cannot come back to check on her. She climbs the towers every night anyway, even when she is tired and cold. The book shows that being faithful means doing your job just as well when the grown-up is far away.

• Other people depend on the light

  The lamps on Matinicus Rock are not for Abbie's family alone; sailors out on the dark sea need them to steer clear of the rocks. Abbie scrapes the ice from the windows for ships she will never meet. Small faithful work can keep people safe that we never see.

• Caring for the family

  Besides the lamps, Abbie nurses her sick mother, looks after her little sisters and saves the hens whose eggs they need to eat. She does the work of a grown-up because her family needs her. Love at home shows itself in plain chores done for others.

• A father's trust

  Captain Burgess trusts Abbie with the most important work on the island, and every night from far away he looks for her lights. When he comes home, he tells her that the lights told him his family was safe. Abbie's faithful work answers her father's trust.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine appears only at the edges of the story. The keeper's wife is ill with an unnamed sickness, and the father's voyage is partly to fetch medicine from Rockland, a reminder that an island lighthouse family of the 1850s had no doctor within reach and depended on whatever remedies could be carried out by boat. Day-to-day nursing falls to a teenage daughter. As the storm drags on, food runs short and the hens' eggs matter for survival; historical accounts of the real 1856 storm describe the family living for a time on very small daily rations of cornmeal mush and eggs, though the book itself does not give exact amounts. Abbie's exhaustion from repeated night climbs and broken sleep is shown plainly but not medicalized.

• Opening pages

  Abbie's mother is sick, and her father sets out for the mainland partly to bring back medicine.

• Middle of the book, during the storm

  Abbie nurses her mother and cares for her sisters while also tending the lamps through the night.

• Late in the storm

  Food runs low and Abbie grows worn out from weeks of broken sleep and hard work.