Firefighters in the Dark [Hardcover]

Dashka Slater (Author), Nicoletta Ceccoli (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

At night, a girl hears the sirens from the fire station near her house.
Even though it is dark outside, she knows where they are going: to a castle, to a garden, all the way to Pluto . . .

Dashka Slater and Nicoletta Ceccoli have crafted a dreamy ode to firefighters everywhere and the big, brave, spectacular feats they accomplish every day, and every night—all the world over.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 1–Snug in her bed, a youngster hears a distant siren and dreams of firefighters' brave escapades. With the refrain, What happened was this, she relates several imaginary adventures. The squad saves a castle full of princesses after a dragon blows on his food and starts a fire, cools a woman's mouth after she eats a hot pepper, and rescues a boy who bounces off his bed and lands on Pluto. The girl also concocts personalities for the diverse crew members, down to their favorite foods. Finally, the firefighters come to ask for her help in extinguishing the stars from the night sky. Slater's rhythmic, sometimes rhyming prose captures the child's enthusiasm, though unusual phrasings may trip up unpracticed readers while sharing the book aloud. Ceccoli's dreamy, luminescent paintings perfectly suit the story. The heroes' round faces are kind and lovable. Observant youngsters will note that the firefighters' yellow and black boots appear as yellow and blue, but this minor inconsistency will give way to delight at the image of the dragon at the table with fork and knife in hand, or the view up through city buildings of an exuberant boy tumbling through the air. A perfect choice for bedtime reading.–Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Slater and Ceccoli are ideally paired, with the incantatory rhythms of the prose mirroring the velvety surfaces and Zen-like vibe of the acrylic and pastel paintings. The result is a book that's both engrossing and lulling--a wonderfully offbeat choice for bedtime.
Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; None edition (October 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618554599
• ISBN-13: 978-0618554591
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 10.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,126,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When I was little, I liked to tell stories. Both of my parents are writers, and they used to read me stories, and tell me stories, and my mother even used to draw little picture books that were all about me. I started by telling stories to my mother, who wrote them down for me until I was old enough to write them down myself.

Every week I went to the library and checked out as many books as I could carry. Soon I began filling up notebooks writing my own stories. I sent some of what I wrote to the contests at the back of Cricket Magazine, and several of them were published there.

I began writing poetry when I was seven, and wrote more and more of it as I got older. In high school I took some classes at the local university with the the poet Lawson Inada who loaned me lots of books of poetry and told me that the best way to be a good writer was to read more than I wrote. That's some of the best advice anyone has ever given me.

I kept writing poetry, and won some contests and published some poems and generally got enough encouragement that I never thought of myself as anything other than a writer. After college I began writing for magazines and newspapers, and eventually learned enough about how to organize a narrative to write a novel called The Wishing Box, which was published in 2000 by Chronicle Books and named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times.

My son was born right around the same time, and so I was soon immersed in the world of children's books again, which had always been my first love. Like many parents, I had the urge to write some myself, and so I did. My first books, Baby Shoes and Firefighters in the Dark, were inspired by things my son was interested in. My third book, The Sea Serpent and Me, is based on a story I wrote when I was ten -- it will be released in 2008.

I have continued to write fiction for adults as well, and in 2004 received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which I used to work on a short story collection. I also continue to write articles for magazines -- you can find my journalism in places like Sierra, Mother Jones, and More.

I write every day, sometimes for children and sometimes for grown-ups, because telling stories is still my favorite thing to do.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A firefighter book for girls!, January 11, 2007

By 

Charles Sumner (Stoneham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Firefighters in the Dark (Hardcover)

My three year old daughter is fascinated by firefighters and fire trucks but almost all of the toddler books we've seen on that topic are aimed at young boys and this book is a great alternative. It tells the story of a young girl who lives near a fire station and what she imagines/dreams the firefighters are doing when she hears their sirens at night (putting out one fire in a castle that was started by a dragon and another that was caused by a woman in mexico eating hot chili peppers) as well as silly things about the firefighters themselves. A great book with a wonderful dreamlike quality and fantastic illustrations.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not your typical firefighters book, December 24, 2006

By 

Super Dad (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Firefighters in the Dark (Hardcover)

This is a blessed relief from the run of the mill firefighters book. The text is magical, whimsical and dreamy, and the illustrations are just as outstanding. It reads like the dream of a particularly imaginative kid, which makes it fun to read as a parent. You most definately will not groan when your tot wants you to read it again. And again. And again. You know what I mean. If your kid likes firefighters, this is a must have.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We are on the thousandth read of this book..., March 4, 2007

By 

K. Suh (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Firefighters in the Dark (Hardcover)

...and you would think that I'd be bored from reading it over and over, but somehow I am not.

This book isn't really about firefighters, it's about a young girl's imagination and what she imagines the firefighters do. She hears the fire engine's siren outside her window at night, and she spins these tales that are imbued with a dreamlike quality, almost as if she is drifting off to sleep. They douse a fire at a medieval castle inadvertently ignited by a dragon; he has stopped in for dinner and blown on his potatoes to cool them with his fire breath. They head to a fire all the way in Mexico that started when a woman eats a chili pepper in her garden that is so hot, embers shoot out from her mouth. The ladder crew retrieves a young boy who has bounced so high on his bed that he launched himself all the way to Pluto. He must return home because he doesn't have the right gear on, that is, a spacesuit and mittens. Of course, because it falls to the girl's imagination to name them, they don't have names like Joe and Dave. They have the names Penelope, Almondine, King and, the one conventional name, Bruce.

Imagine several four or five-year olds explaining to you their most fanciful ideas of what firefighters do and this is a composite of those stories. Every detail about the firefighters envisioned by the narrator is so completely true to a young child's imagination, thought-process and rationale, right down to the naming of the firefighters and the non sequitur enumerating of what foods they like to eat. Only a kid would include a list of foods each firefighter enjoys. It's actually quite hilarious. My two-year old daughter most enjoys doing her impression of the father of the boy who bounced to Pluto with her gruff grown-up voice yelling "Come down here right now, it's time for bed." Only a ridiculous grown-up would say something so deflating and practical at a time like that.

The dreamy quality of the illustrations perfectly compliments the text. Nicoletta Ceccoli always renders the most elegant images, here as in Little Red Riding Hood and Island in the Sun.