There comes a time in every reader’s life when she finds she must bend the rules. Of course we want to read all of the 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. And we start this challenge with great resolve.

But our resolve slowly weakens as we confront impossible walls. Some of these books are not available in any public libraries in the United States. Some of these books are completely out of print. Some of these books are only available in Swedish.

What is a reader to do?

In the case of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage, which I learned was no where to be found, I was forced to find a book in the same series. I am quite certain that Lunch is a vastly superior book to Rescue, but one must do what one must do.

Rescue is the tale of Mr. Grinling, the lighthouse keeper, who lives with his wife and cat in a beautiful cottage near his workplace. Mr. Grinling has a big problem, however; he keeps falling asleep before he can prepare the light for the night. As you might imagine, this is a very serious problem for a lighthouse keeper and it gets him into a great deal of trouble which, in the way of books for young children, is easily resolved.

(If you are curious, the real 1001 book, Lunch, has at its heart the difficulty Mr. Grinling faces of keeping pesky seagulls from eating his lunch. The question arises, as it must: Is a story about a lighthouse keeper who can’t stop seagulls from eating his lunch really the better story, a better tale than that of a man who compulsively falls asleep on the job, endangering the lives of all those asea around him?)

A 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. ( )