Sarah at Blacksod Lighthouse
I’ve always been fascinated by history and as a child I loved novels set in the past like The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. A few years ago I visited Dublin’s brilliant tenement museum, 14 Henrietta Street and while walking through the rooms, I imagined what it must have been like to live in one of the well-furnished upper floor flats or in one of the damp, dark basement flats.
These families came alive in my mind and gave me the spark to write a children’s book about them, my first historical novel for children, The Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street. It took two years of research, a process that I greatly enjoyed, and I loved bringing early 20th century Irish history alive for young readers.
In 2019 I watched RTÉ’s Great Lighthouses of Ireland and first heard the remarkable story of Maureen Flavin and the Blacksod D-Day weather reports, as told on screen by her husband, Blacksod Lighthousekeeper Ted.
I was fascinated. I knew immediately it would make a great story for children but I also knew I’d need to make some changes to the real events to make the plot work.
Maureen was just twenty-one when she gave the D-Day weather reports in 1944 but she didn’t discover the significance of her role until ten years later when workers from the Irish Met Office came to close the Blacksod weather observation station. She married Ted in 1946 and they went on to live in Blacksod lighthouse with their family.
In my book I created a fictional Blacksod lighthouse family, the Devines, inspired by the Sweeny family. I gave it a working title, The Weather Girls, which stuck and is now the actual title. I created a main character, twelve-year-old Grace Devine who lives in the lighthouse with her nine-year-old brother, Dannie, her dad, the Lighthousekeeper and her Mum who she calls Flora (a Scottish woman with a Masters in Engineering), and their two Labradors Lucky and Poppy, named after my own dogs!
As well as the weather reporting for D-Day plot line, I also created a sub-plot. Grace and her best friend, Sibby rescue a young German airman from a burning plane. There are mixed reactions to this in the village, some think they should not have saved him, which creates tension in the plot.
Here’s what I have learned about writing historical fiction for children while researching and writing both The Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street and The Weather Girls. I’m now starting research on another historical novel for children and I’m sure I’ll learn even more during that process!
1/ Children are very interested in history if you give them the right story and the right characters. Generally they like when the story is narrated by children their own age or a little older than they are (not an adult).
2/ Don’t presume that children know anything about the period of history in your book. Set the scene and the time carefully from the start.
The Weather Girls is set over five years into World War 2. My editor suggested adding a short introduction at the start of the book explaining the war, the different countries involved on each side and when it had started.
I also added a prologue which is set in 1941. In this scene set in a cinema, the main character, Grace and her best friend, Sibby are in the cinema. They watch a newsreel about the Belfast bombings, foreshadowing incidents later in the book and discuss the war on the way home from the cinema (or picture house as it was known as at the time).
3/ Research! Research! Research!
I cannot emphasise this enough. Do your research. For The Weather Girls I started off by reading a general book about Ireland during ‘The Emergency’ (WW2). Then I read books about other aspects of the era, people’s lives at the time, especially children’s. I watched documentaries and films about the time and read up about D-Day and weather forecasting, plane crashes, Éire signs… all kinds of things.
I used the internet to look things up, making sure to check several sources and a book if possible for definitive facts. I spoke to people who remembered the 1940s about things like school at the time and rationing. I visited Blacksod twice, and was lucky to have Fergus Sweeney, Maureen’s grandson as a guide. He also read an early draft of the book and the historical notes at the end and was really helpful with the details.
The Writing Process
I wrote a quick first draft and then went through it carefully myself several times, reworking scenes and making changes. I worked hard on the friendship dynamic between Grace and Sibby, making sure it was realistic. They have strong personalities and don’t always see eye to eye on things, which makes for an interesting relationship! I was delighted that Marita Conlon-McKenna picked up on this in her review of the book. She said ‘I loved this story of two best friends, Grace and Sibby, caught up in all the excitement and tensions of World War Two. Sarah Webb has not only brilliantly captured life during the Emergency, but the dynamics of friendship between two very different girls.’
Once I was happy that I’d done all I could with the manuscript, I sent it to my editor at The O’Brien Press. She had lots of great editorial suggestions in her structural edit and it was at this stage that I added information at the start of the book to explain World War 2 to children who had not read or heard about it yet. Children study WW2 in 5th and 6th class but before that may not have come across it.
A few more edits and the book was ready for production. The team at The O’Brien Press added a map, illustrations of weather instruments and typeset the manuscript beautifully. With a stunning cover by Charli Vince, five years after first hearing Maureen’s story, The Weather Girls is now ready for its readers!
Sarah Webb is an award-winning Irish children’s writer and creative writing teacher. She is also the Events Manager at Halfway up the Stairs children’s bookshop in Greystones, Co Wicklow. Her books include Blazing a Trail: Irish Women who Changed the World (illustrated by Lauren O’Neill) and I Am the Wind: Irish Poems for Children Everywhere, both winners of Irish Book Awards. Her latest book is The Weather Girls which was inspired by real WW2 events in Ireland.
