Ablaze

The Story of America's First Female Smokejumper

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Viking Books for Young Readers

(Penguin Random House)

pub. 7.1.2025

40 pages

Ages 4 - 7

Author: Jessica Lawson

   Illustrator: Sarah Gonzales

Character: Deanne Shulman

Overview:

"Deanne loved being outdoors.

With her family, she spent summers sailing the Salton Sea and backpacking the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As she grew older, her love of nature only grew. So when the heat rose each fire season and the blazes burned near and far, she noticed. Deanne knew she had to do her part in fighting the fires.

She spent years on woodland crews, clearing brush and branches that could make the fire spread, and on hotshot crews where she fought faster fires and took bigger risks, spending weeks in one-hundred-degree heat working twenty-four-hour shifts.

But what Deanne really wanted was to be a smokejumper, to jump from planes and parachute into dangerous wildfires that no truck could ever reach. To be the first line of defense. The only problem? There had never been a female smokejumper before.."

Tantalizing taste:

"She kept training,

to keep her body strong and ready.

She kept working,

joining a helicopter rappel crew

in Oregon.

She kept listening,

remembering voices of the smokejumpers

who believed in her

as much as she believed in herself."

And something more: Jessica Lawson in the Author's Note explains: "Deanne Shulman made national history by breaking into the ranks of all-male smokejumpers. Because of her efforts, the minimum weight requirement has changed to 120 pounds and the height requirement to five feet. Though Deanne often balks at being labeled a hero, she opened the door of opportuity for all women who work as wildland firefighters...

I've spent a great deal of my life in Colorado, where wildfires are an annual problem... I am incredibly grateful to people like Deanne, who fight on the front lines of wildfires to protect our livelihoods."