DON’T BE AFRAID OF SIRENS: SOMEONE NEEDS HELP is a children’s book conveying precisely that: the blaring of sirens means someone, somewhere needs help. Father and daughter team R.L. Florez and M.L. Florez succeed in producing an attractively presented work telling the story of a father striving to comfort his distraught child.

The plot is simple. Mandy is upset by the sound of passing sirens. Her father explains that those sounds are produced by emergency vehicles on call—“The siren lets drivers know to get out of the way”—and, before long, Mandy not only follows but feels proud that she understands. The book is laid out conventionally, with the text on the left-hand page and the pictures on the right. The illustrations are lively and well-judged, and the presentation overall is of high quality.

The story itself is a little slight, consisting of the father comforting his daughter and taking her out to the roadside, where a passing ambulance shows her what drivers do when they hear an emergency vehicle nearby. One feels the demonstration could have been rendered a little more clearly. After it passes, the father tells the daughter that “you helped too” by moving out of the way, but it’s not quite clear that this is so—for father and child were never “in the way” in the first place. The illustration hedges a little, showing the pair standing near the road—though one feels the point would have been driven home more clearly if a scene had been included showing the family on their way somewhere in a car when an ambulance went by. Mandy’s playacting on her tricycle later shows she got the message, but a more practical example earlier would make the point clear to all readers.

Nonetheless, DON’T BE AFRAID OF SIRENS is a good book and a necessary one. In a country increasingly wracked by climate change-related disasters and increasing political instability, the emergency services are only going to find themselves more and more in demand, and the book’s central message is one that any parent would do well to assimilate.

Skillfully written by R.L. Florez and M.L. Florez, DON’T BE AFRAID OF SIRENS: SOMEONE NEEDS HELP is a well-illustrated book with an important message about emergency vehicles and how to respond to small children’s reactions to them.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader