The Sea Chest By: Toni Buzzeo Post By: Olivia Harrington

One night a little girl and her Great Aunt await a stranger inside the cozy comfort of a warm home. Auntie Maita is very very old and gray. But that does not stop her from telling stories to the narrator of this very wonderful tale. While they await this 'stranger' Aunt Maita tells the story of growing up on an island in Maine. She tells of her mother and her father who kept a lighthouse on Sanctuary Island. One night a ferocious storm blows in from the sea. A vessel off the coast is too far away for Maita's Papa to do anything so he just focuses on keeping the light in the lighthouse lit. The next morning, Maita and her Papa go out searching the shore for anything they can find. Rather than finding pieces of sea glass for her collection, Maita and Papa stumble across a huge bundle of mattresses tied up with rope and sailor's knots. Maita hears a sound from inside and desperately hopes it is a little kitten. Upon unwrapping the large bundle, Maita and her Papa discover a leather sea chest with an adorable baby girl inside and a note from her parents. Her parents were the captain and captain's wife of the vessel that was destroyed in the storm. Maita and her father carry the baby home and Maita names it Seaborne. Seaborne becomes her sister and the two grow up together. Seaborne sleeps in the chest until she outgrows it. She follows Maita to the place where she ends up living and makes a happy life for herself there until she passes away and leaves Maita an only child again. As the story ends, our little narrator speaks of her excitement and her Great Grandmother Seaborne's chest sitting open with a quilt inside it, anxiously awaiting the little sister that her parents have gone to get from across the sea.

This sweet story is so imaginative and creative but it still tugs on the heartstrings. There is no way to know what twist to expect next in the story and so children would really enjoy making guesses about what will happen on the next page. This book would also make a great introduction into talking about adoption and how some children come to live with families because they do not have living parents. It would also make a great introduction into talking about family heirlooms and things that have been passed down from generation to generation in children's own families. It would even be neat to do a unit on lighthouses and use this book to talk about what purposes lighthouses have. On the last page of the book, the author talks about a legend from Maine that follows a very similar storyline to this book. It might be a neat idea to use this book as an introduction to legends as well and perhaps have children share a legend that they know or to write their own legend and illustrate it with pictures. I would most likely use this book in a 3-5 classroom to talk about legends and lighthouses but to talk about adoption and families it could be used in K-2. There is just so much you can do with this book that kids are sure to love it no matter what age they are!!!