Ablaze: The Story of America's First Female Smokejumper

Ages 4 to 7, Grades P to 2

A lyrical and empowering biography on Deanne Shulman, America's first female smokejumper.

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.

With lyrical text from Jessica Lawson and striking illustrations from Sarah Gonzales, Ablaze tells the story of Deanne Shulman’s groundbreaking work with the United States Forest Service as she fought against unfair rules and blazed the way for women in firefighting.

About the Author

Jessica Lawson is the critically acclaimed author of The Actual & Truthful Adventures of Becky Thatcher, a book that Publishers Weekly called “a delightfully clever debut” in a starred review, and Nooks & Crannies, a Junior Library Guild Selection and recipient of three starred reviews. She is also the author of Waiting for Augusta (winner of the Colorado Book Award), Under the Bottle Bridge, and How to Save a Queendom. Her debut picture book is Ablaze, a biography of the nation's first female wildfire-fighting smoke jumper. You can visit her at JessicaLawsonBooks.com.

Author Residence: Pennsylvania

Sarah Gonzales was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Alberta. She graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design with a bachelors of visual communication design majoring in illustration. Since then, she has worked in games, editorial, and book illustration. Sarah is the Ezra Jack Keats Award-winning illustrator of The Only Way to Make Bread, written by Cristina Quintero. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Illustrator Residence:Montreal, Quebec

Illustrator Hometown:Alberta