I want to tell you about the book I met as an adult, and was very happy that I found it, and was very upset that I did not read it in time. Of course, many of you know the story of James Krüss, which is called "Timm Thaler, or the Traded Laughter" But this German writer has another book that is worth your attention.
"The Lighthouse on the Lobster Cliffs" is a book full of incredible things. These are short tales and rhymes, which are funny alternating, which are interesting to read. They are full of what can be seen only on a lighthouse, on an island, on the sea. They are full of noise of waves, light, gulls, splashing of water, sun glare and the incredible animal world of the sea. They are full of fishing life and light of the lighthouse in the night. They are full of all that we managed to put as backgrounds for fabulous and funny stories.
Each poem, every story of the book is an absolutely terrific story, where not only respectable townspeople, hardworking fishermen, lighthouse keeper, but also cats, mice, seagulls, fish, etc., act. But the most important character in the book is the sea .
In me, in a man who only rarely came to the cultivated Black Sea coast and saw a wild sea, wild nature, this book stirred something very important in the soul. Because the caretaker on the lighthouse even for a few minutes dreamed of becoming one in his life. For many, this dream has remained somewhere deep down. And whenever we look at the wide surface of the water, when we peer into the starry sky, we always remember that we would like to live in such a place.
Fairy tales and stories told in the book of James Krüss, and they are written with Andersen's immediacy - then the moon descends from the sky, the fish talk, these tales remind us that everything in our life could be quite different.
I read this book with a melancholy sadness and understood with what wonderful foreword she could become to the story of Richard Bach "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". The feeling of freedom is one of the main sensations that remain after reading Bach, in addition to thinking about life and thinking about the philosophy that is there. The sense of freedom does not leave James Krüss.
You will like this book, you will like these stories. When in the future you start reading books from other European writers with your child, James Krüss will remember you with many reminiscences. He mentions a lot of things in the Lighthouse: people, cities, places, and literary works.
Here is an inspiring "The Lighthouse on the Lobster Cliffs". Read and enjoy.
Pic. James Krüss