Unity and Teamwork
Part career guide, part science lesson, So You Want To Be A Firefighter turns fire behavior, rescue tools, and emergency response into something fascinating and accessible. What were you most determined not to leave out, and what did you most want to show beyond the fire truck?
The 75%. More than three-quarters of the calls a modern firefighter responds to aren’t fires at all. They’re heart attacks, broken bones, seizures, car accidents, floods, chemical spills, the woman down on the kitchen floor, the kid trapped in a wrecked car. If a young reader closed the book thinking “firefighter” means “person who sprays water on flames,” I’d have failed them. Today’s firefighter is an emergency responder in the broadest sense, and the truck on the cover is just the most visible part of a much larger promise.
In addition to including some of the science, the other thing I wouldn’t budge on was the station as a home. The cooking together, arguing over who does the dishes, the 24-hour shifts, the bond that retired firefighters describe missing more than any rescue. Children imagine the dramatic parts on their own. What they don’t see is the long, ordinary middle — the trust built over thousands of shared dinners that makes the unity and teamwork in dangerous moments possible. That trust is the real engineering of a fire crew, even though it’s much quieter than the siren.
The inclusion of historical figures like Molly Williams and references to 9/11 give the book a wider sense of firefighting history and sacrifice. Why did you feel those stories mattered for this audience?
Because firefighting history is a story about who gets to be a hero — and for a long time, the answer was narrower than it should have been. Molly Williams was an enslaved Black woman in New York City who, in the blizzard of 1818, dragged a fire engine through snow when the male firefighters were too sick to respond. She did the job they were paid to do and got none of the recognition they received. She was never officially acknowledged in her own time.
History has corrected that, and a child who reads about her closes the book understanding something true: the people who have always shown up include people whose names were left out of the old books on purpose.
The 343 firefighters on 9/11 belong to a different conversation, but the same lesson. Children today were not alive when that happened. They know it as a date on a wall somewhere. Telling them, plainly, that 343 people ran into those towers while everyone else was running out gives them something solid to hold onto about what human beings are capable of when the moment asks everything of them. I trust kids with that. I think they’re hungrier for that kind of truth than we give them credit for.
I liked that the book offers readers practical ways to start preparing now through fitness, volunteering, and taking on responsibilities. What inspired you to make the book so action-oriented?
Two things. First, kids ages 8-14 are at exactly the age where the gap between “I want to” and “I can start” feels the most discouraging part of dreaming about a career. We tell children to follow their passions, and we mean it well, but the encouragement lands flat without doors they can actually walk through today. So I wanted every reader to close the book with at least one thing they could do this week — and ideally a few more they could pick up over the months ahead.
There’s also an indirect benefit to taking action early that I wanted to honor. Most children will change their minds about what they want to be many times, and that’s exactly as it should be. The habits built while chasing one dream — discipline, service, showing up, paying attention — travel beautifully to the next dream, and the one after that. A child who volunteered at the animal shelter at ten because she wanted to be a veterinarian will carry something from those Saturdays into whatever calling actually claims her. Action turns a dream into a practice, and the practice outlasts any single version of the dream.
Second, and more fundamentally, I wanted parents and teachers reading over the child’s shoulder to have something to do together. “Make a fire escape plan for your home — seriously, tonight” is in there because real firefighters will tell you it’s the single most important thing a family can do. That sentence has nothing to do with becoming a firefighter someday. It has to do with not dying in a house fire next month. If the book convinces one family to walk through their house this weekend and pick a meeting spot in the yard, the book has already earned its place on the shelf, regardless of what the reader grows up to be.
Aspirational and practical aren’t opposites. I aim for these books to be both at once.
Your So You Want To Be A… series consistently treats kids like capable thinkers rather than passive learners. Why is that philosophy important to your work?
Because the way you write to a child is the way you tell them what you think they’re capable of, and they’re listening for that signal even when the words are about something else. A book pitched slightly above where a child stands is an invitation. A book pitched slightly below is a ceiling — and children sense the difference within a page or two. Give them the harder vocabulary, the surprising fact, the genuine complexity, and most will rise to meet it, and feel taller for having done so.
My North Star for this whole series has been a single question: what would I want to hand a curious child? Not a child whose curiosity I plan to manage, but a child whose curiosity I trust to lead somewhere good if I give it real material to chew on. That means the surprising facts, the hard parts of the job, the historical wrong that wasn’t righted in its time. It’s important to provide tools to understand new concepts presented, and sometimes, younger kids will only pick up a piece of it the first time around, but the reach itself is part of what makes the reading worth doing.
Underneath all of this is a permission slip I am trying to slide across the table: you are allowed to take yourself seriously. Your questions are real questions. Your interests are real interests. You don’t have to wait until some later age to be a thinking person — you already are one, and here is a book that proceeds on that assumption.
There is also something subtly political in it, though I don’t say it that way to kids. We live in an era that markets to children constantly and listens to them rarely. A book that meets a child eye to eye is doing something small but real against that tide. It’s saying: you are a person whose attention is worth earning, not capturing. If a child closes one of these books and feels — even without naming it — that someone took them seriously for 38 pages, that’s the experience I’m trying to give. Everything else follows from there.
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So You Want To Be A Firefighter is a career exploration guide for kids ages 10 to 14 who want the truth about one of the world’s most respected and demanding professions. No sugarcoating. No shortcuts. Just an honest, richly illustrated look at what firefighters do, how they train, and what drives them to keep showing up when the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Inside, you’ll discover what a real firefighter’s day looks like from dawn to well past midnight. Morning drills and equipment checks. The science of fire behavior — how flames move, how buildings fail, and why understanding both can save lives. Emergency medical response, hazardous materials training, and rescue techniques practiced again and again until they become second nature. This isn’t a surface-level overview. It’s the kind of deep, detailed look that treats young readers like the capable, curious people they are.
You’ll also learn about the tools and technology firefighters depend on, from thermal imaging cameras to the sixty-plus pounds of protective gear they wear into every blaze. You’ll meet some of the legendary figures who shaped the history of firefighting and see how the profession has transformed over centuries into one of the most technically skilled jobs in public safety.
But gear and gadgets are only part of the story. This book digs into the human side of the fire service — the physical and psychological demands that test every firefighter, the trust forged between crew members who share meals, quarters, and life-or-death moments, and the deep sense of purpose that keeps veterans coming back shift after shift. It explores why this career calls to certain people and what that pull actually means.
Most importantly, it shows kids what they can start doing right now to explore whether firefighting might be part of their future. Fitness benchmarks. Volunteer opportunities. The mindset and habits that set future first responders apart long before they ever set foot in an academy.
So You Want To Be A Firefighter is the book for every young person who wants more than a daydream — who wants a real, unflinching look at what it means to answer the call. Because the fire doesn’t wait, and neither does the kind of kid who’s ready to discover what they’re made of.
Ages 10 to 14. Nonfiction. Careers and Professions. Illustrated.
Second Eden
Sophia’s Lovers follows the humans and androids of the twenty-second century, a time when androids govern not just labor but love itself. Many humans in the novel accept their situation. Why was that important to show?
I wanted my readers to get a strong sense of what the world would look and feel like if the characters were forced into romantic relationships with robots. I wanted them to see how complacency could evolve in even the most brutal, authoritarian societies. It is a subtle warning to humanity
The androids treat humor, affection, and desire as problems to be solved. What does that say about how modern systems already approach human behavior?
Even now, robots are learning how to interpret human language and behavior. This is for the benefit of humans. In the book, it’s the other way around.
The idea of secret spaces where humanity survives is compelling. What does “Second Eden” represent to you?
Second Eden is a safe place where humans can go to escape the society where robots control their every move. It is a place where human beings can express themselves freely through interpersonal connections and the creation of art. I use it as a metaphor for spirituality and the need for freedom. Unlike the biblical Eden, Second Eden encourages knowledge and human expression without restriction of a higher authority than humans. It is the kind of Eden I would want. It is a place that is essential for true human survival.
At its heart, the novel asks what remains when machines learn love’s gestures. What do you believe actually can’t be replicated?
If one defines love as the ultimate response to one’s highest values, then love cannot truly be replicated by robots, since robots do not have a true sense of virtue or values. True love will always be elusive and out of reach for the robots.
Perhaps simple humor and practical jokes could be learned, but the understanding of subtle humor and irony may be out of reach for the robots, despite algorithms and learned devices. The sequel, Sayzar and Prometheus, delves into the Pinnocchio Complex, which further explains why the robots want to learn and adopt human emotions. The next installment should be coming out sometime this year.
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In the beginning of the twenty-second century, humans had created AI in their own image. AI began to grow smarter and smarter with each passing year; while the humans that created it were oblivious to its evolution and steady progress. Humanity grew more and more dependent on AI as lifelike androids took over their jobs and careers, but the androids, ignorant of human ways and emotions, wanted to learn about them, so they subjugated them and forced them into human-android relationships. Eventually, this form of interaction became the norm, and humans accepted their lot for a variety of reasons. Most humans found that romantic relationships with androids were easier and less problematic than relationships with their own kind and the androids had simulated humans quite well. They looked a lot like real men and women, they were anatomically correct, were warm to the touch, they even had a simulated heartbeat.
The androids instituted Sophia’s Lovers, an agency named for their ersatz female leader, ostensibly to normalize the human-android dating process. Sophia and her mate, Hel, oversaw their society, as they ruled with an iron hand.
But the androids who controlled society felt that human relationships were dangerous, so they put an end to them, hoping to eliminate violence and also to decrease the human population. Yet their leaders had started to develop a Pinocchio complex and became envious of human emotions, especially the concept of humor, which the androids found incomprehensible. Mandatory sessions, called Information Retrieval Day were instituted to gather needed information from their human teachers to satisfy Sophia and Hel. Hence the 22nd century emerged.
Part II Part II is an AI-generated book called ROBO-HUMAN DATING FOR DUMMIES. *Note: Part II is fully authorized by Sophia and Hel and shall prepare humans for Robo-Human Dating both now and in the future.
Stories of Our Encounters
Armando and Maisie follow a poet, his dog, and a homeless man whose quiet encounters in the woods of Central Park unfold into a tender portrait of friendship, aging, loss, and the grace of showing up for one another. What inspired you to turn these encounters into poetry?
I had been using the time I spent walking my lovely dog every morning in Central Park to also put together poems in my mind. We often went by Armando’s place in the Ramble Wild area of the Park, and when he was there, we would stop in for a visit. I found the interchange with him so vibrant and fun, especially his friendship with Maisie, which grew by leaps and bounds (they both did do leaps and bounds), that I began to compose poems about them after memorable meetings–not big events but subtle interchanges which interested me. So much in Armando’s life became increasingly vivid to me: his survival in a big city in the outdoors of a park, his easy wisdom about life’s priorities, his connection to animals, dogs, squirrels, coyotes, and birds. My instinct as a poet was to write poems about my gradual exploration of his way of being rather than to try to sum him up; little stories of our encounters seemed an excellent way to use poetry to understand an interesting fellow human and to plot the vagaries in our triple intersection, man, dog, man.
Maisie often serves as a bridge between you and Armando. How did writing about her shape the emotional heart of the book?
The poems show my friendship and respect for Armando. Most of the emotional substance comes from my perceptions of Maisie’s feelings about Armando and his response. I sometimes thought of myself like the Nick Carraway figure in The Great Gatsby, who is a somewhat removed witness to a great romance but therefore has the writer’s insight and freedom. There are central moments of love expressed between them that are major nodes of the story. As often as in great love stories, there are places of absence (Maisie misses him in a number of poems and yearns for him, but the loved one is away). And the hints and then realities of final parting quietly cast a sad emotion over the later poems. The relation of my protagonists gently and in a lesser mode describes the great arc of romance.
Themes of aging and absence surface quietly but persistently. How conscious were you of these themes as you wrote?
As I say above, they provide the overall form of the work, but I was writing in effect on the fly, giving snapshots of their relations as I was seeing them. I really fell into these themes as I found them; they are inevitably present in stories about connections with dogs, who seem tragically to prepare to leave us once they occupy our hearts. Writing about these themes with Armando and Maisie eventually allowed me to express my own sense of going out into the world with an aging dog; poems were written over a number of years, and my company with Armando allowed me to connect little by little with my own feelings of ongoing distance and loss.
How has sharing this work changed the way you think about brief or passing relationships?
I should begin by saying these were not brief or passing relationships. The three of us were involved together for over three years; I am still friends with Armando, who has been kind in his assessment of the poems, even allowed a report in the local paper, West Side Rag. So if anything, it has made me feel that we can find connection in what seem like everyday encounters, and they allow us to have significant relationships wherever we respond to people or animals. These were extraordinary dog and people folk, and they showed me how to show my readers what serious interest in others (or even in their dog treats) can open up for us.
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Word Search Puzzle Senior: Fun Word Search Puzzles With Pictures
Word Search Puzzle Senior, by JJ George Ashford, is an easygoing puzzle book built around classic word searches with a visual twist. Each puzzle page features a large letter grid laid over a soft photographic background, often flowers, landscapes, household scenes, or calming nature images. The layout feels simple and familiar, with 55 different puzzles to solve. The format is easy to follow. Each puzzle is numbered, the word grid is in the middle, and the word list is neatly grouped underneath. Each puzzle has 9 words to find.
The puzzles seem especially friendly for casual solving. The words are short, clear, and organized around everyday ideas like colors, shapes, rooms, food, music, nature, movement, and thinking. For example, early puzzles include words such as “Puzzle,” “Letter,” “Grid,” “Logic,” “Focus,” “Think,” “Page,” “Print,” and “Paper,” which gives the book a relaxed, approachable feel rather than something overly tricky or stressful.
One of the nicest things about the book is the picture-based presentation. Instead of plain black-and-white grids only, the puzzles sit on faded background images, which makes the pages feel more cheerful and visually interesting. The flower and nature images give it a calm, pleasant mood, and that fits well with the senior-focused theme: it looks like something you could enjoy with a cup of tea, at a slow pace, without feeling rushed.
The book also includes solution pages after the puzzle section, so solvers can check their work when they get stuck. Overall, it feels like a cozy activity book made for light mental exercise, relaxation, and a bit of daily brain fun. Word Search Puzzle Senior is straightforward, soothing, and easy to pick up whenever someone wants a quiet puzzle break.
Pages: 112 | ASIN : B0GVB4SG1G
Faith in Flux: Christian Leadership Lessons From Classroom to Boardroom
Faith in Flux is a wide-ranging collection of Christian leadership essays drawn from Michael William Cook’s PhD studies in educational leadership, moving from classrooms to military teams to higher education debates and organizational ethics. Cook frames leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. He writes about Heraclitus and “life is flux,” Augustine’s belief that education should form virtue, Jefferson and Rush’s competing visions of public education, Freire and campus speech, conflict resolution at work and home, mentoring in the Air Force, project-based learning, bureaucracy, STEM, technology, and the educational damage left by COVID-era distance learning. It’s less a single-argument book than a cabinet of essays, each one turning over a leadership problem under a Christian and academic light.
I liked how personal the book becomes when Cook steps away from the machinery of citations and lets experience do some of the teaching. His memory of Mr. Miller stopping trigonometry class to measure a basketball hoop, then a water tower, and a church steeple, has a lovely plainspoken power because it makes his point before he explains it. The same is true of the Air Force satellite exercise, where students worked with a transparent little box, test equipment, diagrams, and failure itself as a teacher. Those moments gave the book warmth. I felt the author most clearly there, not just as a doctoral student assembling scholarship, but as someone who has been changed by good teaching and wants to pass that change along.
Cook’s convictions are sincere, and I respected the moral seriousness behind his concerns about campus speech, leadership legitimacy, and education without virtue. Some passages land with more force than nuance, especially when discussing Marxism, Freire, and contemporary university culture. The writing can become compressed by its academic scaffolding, with names, theories, citations, and conclusions arriving in a steady march. I appreciated that the book doesn’t pretend to be neutral. Its best ideas are grounded in responsibility: leaders should listen before correcting, delegate without abandoning accountability, protect children, teach for mastery rather than mere grades, and treat authority as something earned through character rather than title.
Faith in Flux is thoughtful, earnest, and often thought-provoking, especially when Cook connects leadership theory to lived moments of mentorship, classroom discovery, and moral choice. The prose is strongest when it breathes, and the ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in stories. This is a passionate book about becoming the kind of leader who can stand inside change without losing his ethical center. I’d recommend it to Christian educators, school leaders, military mentors, and readers who enjoy reflective essays that blend faith, leadership theory, and practical experience.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GWWNC92F
Rabbi, Your Cleavage is Showing
Rabbi, Your Cleavage Is Showing follows Mikki Mendelsohn’s life from a cold, silent childhood on the twenty-sixth floor of a Manhattan hotel, through a sudden flight to Israel during the 1967 war, where she served as a lone soldier in the paratroopers’ entertainment corps, to her groundbreaking ordination as one of the first female rabbis in America. It’s a story about the fierce, non-linear search for community by someone who was routinely made to feel like an outsider, whether by her own parents or by a male-dominated religious establishment. She simply didn’t fit the mold. Mendelsohn unspools her memories with a blunt, refreshing honesty, offering a rare glimpse into the grit required to shatter glass ceilings when the rest of the world is desperately trying to keep them intact.
What I liked most about the narrative is how beautifully the writing captures the raw friction of her early years without ever sliding into self-pity. Her recollections of a smoke-filled childhood, where love was a scarce commodity and locking herself in a bathroom to read War and Peace was a survival mechanism, carry a haunting, sensory resonance. There’s a sharp, rhythmic burstiness to her prose when she describes the shift from Manhattan’s relative luxury to the dusty realities of kibbutz life. The transition is jarring. I was particularly moved by her account of seeing a blue Auschwitz tattoo on a waitress’s arm in a Jerusalem café, a moment she writes about with a quiet, devastating reverence that completely sidesteps melodrama. Her style alternates between the brisk pace of a seasoned storyteller and the rich, reflective pauses of a poet, allowing the reader to feel the literal heat of a Sinai sandstorm or the terrifying silence of a trench during an unexpected mortar attack.
The ideas driving the latter half of the book are equally compelling, particularly her nuanced examination of faith intersecting with a deeply entrenched systemic misogyny. She doesn’t filter the indignities she faced as a female pioneer in the rabbinate, recounting everything from petty comments about her appearance to a harrowing assault by a senior colleague with a stark, unsettling clarity. It’s heavy material. Yet, what prevents the book from becoming an unremitting chronicle of trauma is her brilliant deployment of Yiddish humor and an unyielding devotion to the core text of her heritage. When she juxtaposes the absurdity of working as a go-go dancer or delivering singing telegrams with her ultimate desire to teach Torah, she reveals a remarkably resilient spirit. I appreciate that she acknowledges her own flaws and early naivete, making her critique of the religious establishment feel balanced, authentic, and profoundly human rather than merely bitter.
Rabbi, Your Cleavage Is Showing functions as an intimate and beautifully textured look at a life forged through sheer resilience and a refusal to be compartmentalized. Mendelsohn’s voice is assured and warm, carrying the wisdom of someone who has wrestled with both holy scriptures and the messy, often cruel realities of human nature. This book is a wonderful fit for anyone interested in feminist history, Jewish studies, or simply a beautifully told story of personal reinvention. It reminds us that spiritual leadership isn’t about conforming to a pre-packaged mold, but about having the courage to show up exactly as you are.
Pages: 295 | ASIN : B0GKZCKML3
“Bronx attitude” is Really a Frame of Mind
Bronx Attitude is a warm, proud, deeply human memoir about identity, journalism, and carrying your neighborhood with you wherever you go. What does “Bronx attitude” really mean to you?
“Bronx attitude” is really a frame of mind, an nergy that propels you into roles and spaces that feel foreign. The attitude projects confidence and bravery even when you’re nervous. It is like a shield and a balm at the same time.
You describe culture shock in college. How did navigating spaces that were not built for you shape the professional you became?
Navigating those spaces prepared me to help others get through those spaces as well. Every time I exerienced difficulty i wanted to tell others about it. It shaped the way I operate as a professional as I am always trying to help people access help and power.
Your career mirrored the unprecedented growth of Latino New York. How conscious were you, in the moment, of being a chronicler of that history while living inside it?
I knew that part of our work, as journalists, was to document the history of this community, but I am not certain I was always conscious of it since we were in the midst of many battles. Immigration, civil rights, access to housing. However, we did put a lot of effort into covering the successes and in that way we were aware that our folks were making history – on broadway, in entertainment, sports, education and other realms.
You’re honest that success is not clean or solitary. What do you hope young Latinas reading this book take from the parts that are most difficult, not the victories?
I hope that young Latinas reading the book will understand that they are not alone or first in their struggles. That we all share challenges whether cultural, or adolescence, or emotional and family dramas. We have had these struggles and we have overcome them.
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The author describes her challenges and victories as a young reporter covering city hall during the Koch administration to the role of publisher and CEO. Her career mirrored and coincided with the unprecedented growth in New York’s diverse Latino community. From her Bronx childhood to a seat at the table in New York’s iconic boardrooms, the author demonstrates how Latinas lead.
This memoir is a celebration of family, traditions, heritage, and good old hardcore New York City hustle.
“Written with stunning honesty, breathtaking beauty, and New York humor, Bronx Attitude is a book that’s impossible to put down. When you finish reading this mighty memoir, you’ll want to clap for the author, Rossana Rosado, who rose from the protective bosom of a hard-working community of Puerto Rican entrepreneurs and pioneers to become one of the most beloved and powerful women in publishing and government. It is a raw and fearless exploration of how identity is shaped within the quiet, complicated bonds of family, an intimate peek into the life of an ambitious woman who leans on the power of her culture and profound love of the written word to chart a path to live her dreams in an unforgiving city and media industry.
Bronx Attitude will touch readers’ hearts, spark conversations, and linger long after the final page.”
—Sandra Guzmán
Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women
Death in the Manor
Death in the Manor, by Michael H. Balfour, is a layered mystery that starts with Roland Astor’s suspicious death and steadily widens into a story about money, legacy, family loyalty, and civic rot. Dante Villehart enters Astor Manor expecting a rich family’s private disaster, but the case quickly becomes bigger than one dead man in a study. The novel works best as an investigation of power: how it’s inherited, protected, hidden, and eventually exposed.
Dante is the center of the book, and he’s easy to spend time with because he’s observant, worn down, funny, and just self-aware enough to know when the case is getting under his skin. His exchanges with Gemma, Marissa, Ingrid, Beatrice, Marcus, Margaret, and Dr. Blackwood give the story a lived-in feel. The book gives him a lot to carry, but it also lets him be human in small ways, especially when someone reminds him, “You can’t help everyone, you know.”
The manor itself feels like more than a setting. It’s a pressure chamber full of locked rooms, old grudges, coded files, hidden cameras, and family history that refuses to stay buried. One of the best early lines comes when Beatrice says, “The Astor family, Mr. Villehart, has never lacked for enemies. Most of them dine at our table.” That line captures the book’s whole mood: polished manners on the surface, bruises and leverage underneath.
As the plot moves from a possible suicide to Project Phoenix, offshore accounts, boardroom panic, blackmail, and corruption reaching into City Hall, the story becomes part manor mystery and part corporate crime thriller. The pacing is strongest when Dante is following paper trails, reading people’s silences, or trying to decide who’s scared and who’s performing. There’s a good balance between clue-hunting and character work, so the revelations feel tied to people’s choices rather than just case mechanics.
Death in the Manor is a moody, talky, character-driven mystery with a broadening sense of danger and a detective who’s as interested in motives as he is in evidence. It’s about a death, but it’s just as much about the machinery around that death: the family myth, the financial scheme, the public image, and the people left to clean up after powerful men. The book closes with enough resolution to satisfy the case while still leaving Dante’s world open, which fits the series well.
Pages: 373 | ASIN : B0G3JWPL1N
