“Lighthouse” is one of little gosling’s favourite words presently. He saw one in “The storm whale in winter” by Benji Davies and he keeps asking for the book “with Noi”and flips impatiently through the pages to get to the lighthouse. 

It’s the sequel to “The Storm Whale”, which we haven’t read.. yet. But it’s a heartwarming, easy to follow story nevertheless which speaks to the strong bond between a little boy, Noi, and his dad, to friendship, to gratefulness and to good happening to those who do good. When his dad is late from his last fishing outing before the winter sets in, Noi goes out to sea to find him; lost and scared, he is brought back to safety by the whale he saved months earlier. 

I bought the book in an airport bookstore (in a coastal city, precisely) more than a year ago. I liked the storyline; found the context (a single dad, a fisherman and a whale) quite singular; and I could not resist the cuteness of Noi and the whales’ baby faces. 

Baby was not very interested for quite a long time. I enjoyed reading the story to him notwithstanding. However, there was a time, he must have been 10-11 months old, when he would spend minutes looking at the depiction of the family of whales coming from deep sea up towards the boat in which Noi was sitting alone. On one occasion, I put baby down to sleep for the night and went out as a couple – a very rare occurrence. My parents were staying over. And luck has it baby woke up soon after we left and refused to go back to sleep. Only thing that managed to soothe him was the image of the whales, which he stared at for quite a while before moving on to play with his grannies for two hours more before we got home. Presently, he seems more attracted to the drama of Noi waiting for his dad and going out to search for him (thanks to mommy’s theatrical interpretation, no doubt) and to the lighthouse, of course..