Siria is a ‘fire chaser’. She can’t seem to fight the urge to sneak out of her
apartment whenever she hears sirens blare at night. She’s on a mission.
She believes she’s the luck that will keep her firefighter father and
the other firefighters, her extended family, safe. So far she hasn’t been caught, and everyone has been safe.
Only then the fires start happening more frequently, and closer to home! Someone is starting the fires, but
who? Siria has to find out. When evidence begins to point to someone
close to her she’s devastated but she will do whatever she needs to keep her dad
safe.
I was anxious to start reading this book as the author,
Patricia Reilly Giff, wrote one of my favorite books, Pictures of Hollis Woods.
It took a little longer for me to get hooked on this book though, I
think because there was so much happening in a relatively short amount of
pages. There’s the story of Siria
chasing fires, the possible arsonist, her friendships with Douglas and Laila,
the relationship between Siria and her father, the wolf-like dog, the
mysterious homeless person, and Siria’s connections to the stars and constellations. All of that packed onto just 152
pages! I think this book could
easily have been longer which would have allowed the reader to really connect
with Siria and her adventures. As
it was, I was pulled in by the mystery, I needed to discover who was setting
the fires and why. There is also a
moving message of friendship and family woven throughout the story and
reflected on by Siria in the end.
I think students will be drawn to this book by the great
cover art and will be taken in by the characters and the mystery of the
fires. This would also be a wonderful
book to write more about. I can
easily imagine students writing a “back story”, writing more about Siria’s life
at home, her friendships, life at school, and new mysteries she may move on to
in the future.
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