With the Spokane fires raging, Spain and France experiencing unprecedented wildfires, and Seattle smoke season upon us, it’s hard not to think about the new reality of summer wildfires and smoke. Reading can help us make sense of the world around us, and for better or worse, there’s no shortage of titles for all ages related to smoke and wildfires.
Anthropologist Jordan Thomas takes readers to the frontline in When It All Burns, his account as a member of the elite firefighting crew, the Los Padres Hotshots. Tasked with containing the most extreme megafires, hotshots work under perilous conditions. Along with his firsthand accounts of the intensity of firefighting, Thomas provides background on how Indigenous communities successfully used controlled burns and how colonial bans directly led to current conditions, how climate change exacerbates fires nowadays, and how industries profit from disaster. An absorbing and sobering read.
Ignition by M.R. O’Connor delves deeper into the historical and contemporary relationships between humans and fire, presenting a possibility of a more harmonious future. O’Connor traces the importance of fires to cultures across millennia and showcases individuals, groups, and cultures working to bring back controlled burns in order to combat the suppression that makes megafires possible. She weaves her own journey to becoming a wildland firefighter into the story, offering insight into the difficulties faced by the profession, but also the wonder of connecting more deeply with forests.
Moving to fiction, Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s A Fire So Wild chronicles the impact of a wildfire on a Berkeley community, illuminating the disparate effects of climate change based on socioeconomic status. As a wildfire enters a fancy Berkeley community during a fundraising party, the wealthy hosts worry more about their image and the party’s results than their livelihoods, but a homeless couple and high school activists make clear that there is more to lose than mere belongings.
Climate anxiety isn’t limited to adults, and books that address it can be helpful for children to articulate their feelings and offer paths to action. In The Burning Season, a middle-grade novel by Caroline Starr Rose, 12-year-old Opal is training to be a fourth-generation female fire lookout, raised in a fire tower in New Mexico. Trauma from a past fire have left Opal scared, but when she spots a blaze heading for her grandmother, Opal has to face her fears and use her training to save the people and land she loves.
In picture books, acclaimed author Viet Thanh Nguyen partners with illustrator Minnie Phan to tell the story of a child who has to evacuate her California home due to wildfires in Simone. As Simone hurriedly chooses what precious belongings to take and shelters in a school gym, her Má shares her own childhood memories of evacuating due to floods in Vietnam. Simone uses her skills as a budding artist to bring together the folks at the shelter and comfort one another through a drawing project, showcasing how collaboration and community can help in a crisis.
~posted by Jane S.