This is amazing. I cannot believe I never heard of this book before!

It's clearly a bedtime story, though you can read it at any time. The focus of the book isn't on firefighters in the typical way, it's on a little girl making up bedtime stories about where the firefighters near her go every night.

The illustrations, first off, are gorgeous. I would have wanted this book for the pictures alone. At one point, the girl says that the firefighters are never scared, and are as strong as tigers, and you can see how she turns the stripes on their uniforms into tiger stripes to finish the metaphor.

The story, though - wow. The author has managed to pretty much capture a kid's storytelling sense. The firefighters, in her mind, put out fires from a woman eating peppers in Mexico, or from a dragon trying to cool off his food in a castle. At one point, the firefighters (she pictures them as a diverse group, with two men and two women, a nice touch) save a boy who jumps all the way to Mars. "You can't go to Mars like that, you need a spacesuit and your mittens!"

It's such a simple story, but beautifully told and illustrated. You're missing out if you don't immediately run and purchase this for your library. Don't have kids? Get it for yourself! Get it for a local school! Just get it. ( )