Lightship

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, Mar 6, 2007 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 38 pages
You may never have
heard of a lightship.

Once, lightships
anchored on waters
across America,
on the oceans
and in the Great Lakes,
floating where lighthouses
could not be built.
Smaller than most ships,
but more steadfast, too,
they held their spots,
through calm and storm,
to guide sailors
toward safe waters.

In these pages
one lightship
and her crew (and cat)
again hold their place.
The crew goes
again from bow to stern,
from keel to mast,
to run their engines,
shine their lights,
and sound their horns.

They run the small ship
that guides the large ships.
They are the crew (and cat)
that work to make the ocean safe,
that hold their place,
so other ships can sail.

Come aboard!

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

About the author (2007)

Brian Floca was born and raised in Temple, Texas. He graduated from Brown University and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Brian Floca is the author and illustrator of Locomotive, winner of the 2014 Caldecott Medal. He has also written and illustrated Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, Lightship, The Racecar Alphabet, and Five Trucks. He is the illustrator of the Poppy Stories series, by Avi; Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan; Kate Messner's Marty McGuire novels; and Lynne Cox's forthcoming Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas. His books have received four Robert F. Sibert Honor awards, an Orbis Pictus Award, an Orbis Pictus Honor, a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators, and have twice been selected for The New York Times' annual 10 Best Illustrated Books list.