Short story where a girl collecting pink shells is trapped in a cave by a storm

Question

I read this short story at school, I think Primary school but I'm not very good with dates, so over ten years ago. Though as we read it for school it was probably older than that. I also remember it being a short story but again as we read it at school we may have only been given extracts to look at and analyse so it could be longer.

In the story a girl is making a necklace out of pink shells and needs to collect more from the nearby beach. She's so busy collecting them that she doesn't see a storm come in and is hit by strong waves and manages to make it to a cave. She hides out in this cave until the storm passes.

I'm not 100% on this but whilst in the cave she might also see and speak to a coal miner or someone in there too. Or she finds tools or something of that sort. However, that memory is so vague it might be from something else or I am just getting confused.

When the storm passes she heads up back to the house only to find her family upset and none of them can hear her. It turns out she was killed by the storm and is now a ghost.

Answer 1

The Giant's Necklace by Michael Morpurgo.

The story starts with a girl called Cherry collecting pink cowrie shells to make a necklace. She goes to the beach to collect shells, but gets cut off when a storm rolls in. While in a cave she meets some miners. At the end we find out she drowned early on in the book.

It seems to be a popular choice for school reading.