Lighthouse Girl

Created by Dianne Wolfer & Brian Simmonds

Fremantle Press 2010

Teaching notes

Teaching activity

Reviewed by Margarite Igras

This prolific award- winning Australian author has written over 27 books for both children and young adults, but she is best known for her WW1 “Light” series – a collection of four books, that include Lighthouse Girl, Light Horse Boy, (2023 CBCA Honour Book) In the Lamplight and Last Light Horse. These carefully researched books, aimed at primary and lower secondary students, combine fact and fiction to reveal the heartwarming story about Australia at the outbreak of WW1, the ANZACS and the experiences of a war so far away. Together with Brian Simmonds evocative black pastel and pencil illustrations, and the simple narrative text, there is also an intermingling of news clippings, sepia photos, postcards and other facsimiles.

Fifteen-year-old Fay received a diary from her father for her birthday on Aug 5, 1914. Her first entry was that Britain has declared war on Germany. Over the next year, she writes about living on an isolated windswept island off the coast of Albany Western Australia, about her father, the lighthouse keeper, some of Fay’s survival skills such as hunting for mutton-birds, her knowledge of Morse Code and Semaphore and in October, the arrival of a convoy of troopship anchored near their island on their way to Gallipoli. When soldiers signalled messages for Fay to pass on to their loved ones, she agrees and through their  letters and postcards, learns about the horrors of war.

Simmond’s soft evocative illustrations present the touching story form Fay’s perspective, whilst the notes, photographs, maps, postcards, and newspaper clippings add an authentic historical layer to the story, as does the additional information about the real Fay Catherine Howe at the end of the book.

This is a book for both children and adult and is a unique Anzac Story.