Sunday, March 09, 2014
"When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Firefighter: Will's Amazing Day": Children's series has meaning for adults
Authors: Mark Shyres, Debbie Hefke
Title: “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Firefighter: Will’s
Amazing Day”
Publication: Wigu Publishing, Laguna Beach, CA, 2014, ISBN
978-1-939973-11-5, 54 pages, paper, heavily illustrated
Series: “When I Grow Up I Want to Be …” has other entries:
“in the U.S. Army, in the U.S. Navy, in the U.S. Air Force, s Teacher, a Race
Car Driver, a Nurse, a Veterinarian, a Good Person, a World Traveler, a Police
Officer, Green”.
Amazon link:
First, note that this booklet is part of a trademarked
series for children. I must say right
off, I wonder what’s in the “Good Person” book. As for the title of the series, I remember a
coworker, back in 1972, asked me, “Bill what do you want to do when you grow up
… when I grow up, I’ll sit back and contemplate.”
I generally don’t review children’s books, although I get
emails offering samples (as I do for almost everything imaginable – there are a
lot of particular agendas out there). I
did decide to do this one because there are some very adult points behind the
subject.
Children’s books are indeed a specialized genre. Some literary agents don’t work with this
area. When one writes for children, one
is teaching them what they should grasp at a particular age. Sometimes you don’t mention potential
complications that can drive then away.
So it’s a little bit like talking about Santa Claus and the Easter
Bunny. You can’t tell the full truth all
at once. This is a little bit like a
children’s story in a church service. All parents have to deal with these
stages.
The book does cover a lot at a child’s level. As the book opens, Will is afraid of fire and
apprehensive about a class field trip to a fire station. (I can remember, as a child, that one of the
most frightening stories could be that someone “fell into the fire.”) The fire captain says he is more concerned
about someone’s getting hurt than he is of the fire itself, and that is how he
can do this job.
The booklet presents the fact that there are female
firefighters. It also shows that fire personnel sometimes live and sleep in the
fire station in dormitory style while on duty.
It does say that men and women have separate quarters.
Here is where the adult stuff comes to play. I’ve written a lot about gays in the military,
and the perception during many years of debate (leading to “don’t ask don’t
tell”) that the privacy of other persons of the same gender would be
compromised in situations of living together in situations of forced
intimacy. There was also the more subtle
overflowing idea of “unit cohesion”. Over
time, as a younger generation populated the military and as overseas militaries (like Israel’s) seemed to have little trouble when they lifted bans, concerns
over “privacy” and “cohesion” faded. In
fact, back in the 1970s, when ordinances banning civilian employment discrimination
based on sexual orientation started to be circulated, there were screams from
some quarters about forced intimacy in firehouses, in the days when almost all
firefighters had to be men. I remember a
particularly vociferous ad about this point in the New York Daily News around
1977. The issue still is controversial
within the Boy Scouts, which has recently lifted its ban for members but not
leaders.
There’s a more subtle issue, from the grown up world, not
only adults but older teens. That is,
firefighting is inherently dangerous work.
That’s even more the case with wildfires. Of course, serving the military means “risking”
sacrifice, too. But firefighting can
risk especially painful and gruesome injuries as part of the job. That has an impact of loved ones and on
marriages, which need to survive disability and deformity. The culture in which
I grew up in the 1950s emphasized that men needed to be open to taking these
kinds of risks to protect women and children.
That idea is still prevalent with lower income people today. Most of us who are more privileged depend on
others to take risks or deal with 24-hour hardship that we don’t see. Imagine expecting an electric utility lineman
to restore power after a blizzard or ice storm. In the past, that sort of concern has fed ideologies like Maoism.
A few others remarks.
I chuckled that the main character was named “Will”, since that’s the
name of a conspicuous but likeable gay young adult character in the soap “Days
of our Lives” – no doubt a coincidence.
There are other series of children’s books, like “If You
Give …”. In his series “Reid.ing”, the
first film, “It’s Free”, producer-actor Reid Ewing has some fun with “It You
Give a Mouse a Cookie” on his visit to a public library. (See my Movie Reviews blog, May 13, 2013.) It isn’t hard to imagine the political metaphors -- for adults (especially libertarians) –
that follow.
There is a documentary by Myers Video, “A Day in the Life of
a Firefighter”.
I do have a copy of the “Fun with Dick and Jane” First Grade
classic (July 20, 2007).
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