The Animal Lighthouse

Anthony Burt's The Animal Lighthouse is a big-hearted island adventure for 7 year olds about a boy raised by an orangutan, an elephant and a very grumpy raccoon.

What happens

Jim arrived as a baby, bobbing ashore in a barrel. Now he helps run its lighthouse with old Oskar, an orangutan in little round glasses who is always fixing something.

This isn't an ordinary lighthouse. Its special beams make the island look further away the closer a ship sails, until it vanishes like a mirage. That's how the animals keep humans from finding them.

Then, on cleaning day, the bulbs won't light. Somebody has stolen the filaments! Maximus the millipede saw the thief (a thing with horns and spindly legs, taller than Elsa the elephant) but nobody listened because he's so small. And a pirate ship is heading their way.

Jim has his own worry too. He's been on the island for twelve years and nobody will tell him where he came from. Oskar clearly knows more than he's saying, and your reader gets to see a bit more of that than Jim does.

It's full of silly, gross fun. Cornelius the crab pops out of Jim's toilet with a message (and some very smelly parps). Rafi the raccoon keeps a pile of rotting cabbage in the middle of his bedroom. Breakfast turns into an enormous food fight with custard.

And who wouldn't want to live in a lighthouse with a helter-skelter slide wrapped round the outside? Elsa goes down it trumpeting.

The animals are the best bit. They bicker like a big family, and they obviously love Jim to bits. There's a lovely moment when they give him a tool belt they've made him, and Oskar has to wipe away a tear.

One small thing to know about. Maximus the millipede has quite a mouth on him. He calls the others "bumwits" and says they've got "one helluva big problem". Most families won't mind, but it's there.

What to read next

If your reader loves an island full of talking animals and a human who washes up where he doesn't belong, try Lost in Bermooda. A calf on an island run by cows finds a boy floating on a sandbar, and each of them is sure the other is about to eat him.