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? Fire Night! Monica Driscoll Beatty ? ? ? One standard in fire safety education is the book that teaches children, by telling a story, how to behave if there is a fire in their home. The 1999 children's book, Fire Night, offers a pleasantly updated version of that classic genre. |
? Illustration from Fire Night! Copyright ? 1999 Christie Allan-Piper |
Being entertaining and instructive at the same time is always a challenge, and many attempts at telling fire safety in a story end up being tedious, thinly disguised morality tales. In Fire Night, Beatty manages to make her story lively enough to be enjoyable reading, as well as incorporating a high level of accurate detail about fires and firefighting, and good information about fire safety.
The book's color illustrations are attractive and imaginative. On one page, for example, while the older sibling is on the phone to the 911 operator, the youngest child tries to hide under the bed: all that shows of him are chubby red legs and a pair of bunny slippers. And in the scene where the firefighter appears at the window to rescue the children ? one of the main points of the book being to reassure children that even though firefighters look scary, they're there to help you ? the firefighter at the window is depicted with just the right amount of drama: "The firefighter climbed in, breathing noisily through a frightful mask, speaking with a strange, muffled voice... They (the children) screamed even louder and shrank away," says the accompanying text.
What updates this book and sets it apart from traditional "how to stay safe from fires" portrayals is the diversity it encompasses. The family whose home catches on fire is Chinese-American. The oldest child, whose quick thinking and level head save the younger siblings, is a girl. And the firefighter at the window who rescues them all is an African-American woman. If the fire chief and most of the firefighters are still white men ? well, perhaps a few concessions to reality are required, and it leaves room for further progress in the next book.
Beatty was inspired to write the book after a visit to a fire station where she had the chance to put on structural firefighting gear. "My daughter started to cry, (even though) she knew it was me... If a child is afraid of her own mother in a mask, most children are going to be afraid of a stranger," she said in an interview with a local newspaper. She chose an African-American woman as the model for the rescuing firefighter after reading an article about Cambridge, Mass., firefighter Carolyn Domond ? who had no idea, prior to the book's publication, that she was being so honored.
Fire Night!, $8.95, is 30 pages long and illustrated in color. It is published by Health Press, P.O. Drawer 1388, Santa Fe NM 87504; 800/643-2665; www.healthpress.com, and is also available from WFS.