Through the smoke by Phil Cummings
Ill. by Andrew McLean. Scholastic Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781760274702.
(Age: 4+) Highly recommended. Themes: Fire, Survival, Firefighters.
Three children play on a hot blustery day; the wind feels like
dragon's breath. They roam the paddocks around their home, waving
their swords, making their way through the wheat fields to their
castle, Everdell, a cave in the riverbank. Here they continue their
game, watching the cockies screech overhead, splashing water at each
other, jousting and playing with their swords. But as they play the
sleeping dragon wakes and they become aware that the wind and smoke
has intensified, the dragon roaring around them. Riley panics and
the older brother takes both their hands racing back to their cave,
a measure of safety. Here they sit surrounded by the wind and the
fire, and just when the branch of the nearby tree seems to want to
fall, out of the smoke voices can be heard and a fire engine and
group of firefighters arrive. These knights use their sabres of
water to fight the dragon, and push him back. The children are
saved.
Phil Cummings surrounds his story of children trapped in a firestorm
with the metaphor of playing at knights and castles: each of his
wonderfully evocative textual images parallels the games that the
children play: castles and knights, dragons and swords, and when the
fire appears, a dragon wakes, stalking them across the wheat fields.
The arrival of the firefighters continues this image; they are
knights rescuing the children from an ancient scourge.
This imagery is paralleled in McLean's equally evocative watercolour
and charcoal illustrations. With end papers full of smoke, McLean
builds the approaching bushfire from the first pages; the dragon's
claws on the cliff wall, the dusty, blustery wind giving the nod to
the approaching bushfire. When it arrives, his illustrations take on
the colour, swirl, heat and fear that a bushfire evokes, ensuring
the readers will understand how the children are feeling. They will
sweat with them in their hidey hole, all too aware that some people
do not survive these events.
Phil Cummings wrote this story when he was unable to leave his house
for several days during the Sampson Flat bushfires, north of
Adelaide, in January 2015.
He recreates the fear that fire engenders, making it accessible to
younger readers as they play with the trio on the pages, and then
shelter with them as they are surrounded by fire.
His book's dedication to the firefighters tells of the service these
men and women do in our communities, eliciting our gratitude.
Fran Knight