Fire-Us #1: The Kindling

by Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher

Book Overview

It is the year 2007. The world has been wiped out by a deadly plague that killed all the adults. Without them, children perished of hunger and disease. No more people, no more electricity, no more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060080485
• ISBN13: 9780060080488
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Awesome

This is a wonderful book. I had a hard time getting into it, because of the names. But by chapter two, it started getting exciting and the names really suited the childrens personalities. It is an apacolypse, adventure, with lots of humor. The details of the children and the life they live is so well described, I can see how scary it could be for them. This is an edge of your seat story. The ending left me wanting to keep reading. I can't wait to read the rest of the series. Which is on the way. By the third chapter, I ordered the rest of the series.

The five years if Lonelyness and Torture

In the first year of Fire-Us, there was a disease that started and was said to have killed all of the grown ups on the planet. Now for the last five years Mommy, Teacher, Hunter, Action Figure, Baby, and Teddy Bear have been living together in the cold dark town. The reason they are called these odd names is because they don't remember their names from being enclosed for so long. When a man named Angerman comes to their town, they think he's an alien and don't trust him too much. Angerman is going to be going onto his trip to Washington DC and bring them with him to find a man called President to speak to him about rescue efforts. But the only thing is, Mommy hasn't left the house in five years. Will she leave the house? Will they finally reach Washington If you want to find out these questions, you must read this fantastic book. I thought that this book started out boring like how mommy hasn't left the house for five years and how all of the characters are surviving. As the book progresses, it gets more into focus and gets more exiting. I liked the part when they caught the wild children that thought they were a dog and a cat. I think that the emotional people would like this book the most because of all the people that died; it's just a really sad book. For the most part, it is a very adventurous book that I advise everyone to read. If you have read this book already, I would read the second book.

Creepy and Fascinating

This is a sci-fi novel about the end of the world. Every single adult on the planet died. THere are a couple of kids living in a house alone. So begins the Fire-Us trilogy, fascinating, scary, and intriguing. The story is really interesting - I mean slap in your face, give-me-more, I LOVE THIS intersting. A couple of the images were really disturbing, though, like the fact that Hunter had to move the skeletons out of his way at the supermarket. The kids in the story are fascinating, and the Teacher's scarpbook-thing was so . . . wierd that it was actually kind of scary. Then Angerman is introduced. He's really messed up, but I get the idea that he knows something about the virus (Fire-us) that the others don't. This makes him an amazing character, and even if you don't like the story its worth reading the sequel just to find out what happens to him and his battered dummy. I really love this series, though some of the descriptions might be a little too much for younger readers. Well worth anyone who is into sci-fi and apocalypse, as I was at the time. P.S. I read this book five months ago and I still remember all of the characters and their names and quirks. Talk about powerful writing!

An awesome book!!

I loved this book so much! I love reading science fiction books. The only thing that bothered me was their names, but after reading it I got used to it and started to really enjoy the series. You should try to read it!

That Zimmerman Dude is Getting on My Nerves

First of all, bits of this book might be a bit too disturbing for younger children. The themes are powerful and alarming. At first I thought it was a book written by creepy religious fanatics or something. Boy was I wrong. I got stuck into the story of these children with their allegorical names. It's filled with powerful scenes. Angerman has got to be the best catalyst character ever who takes these children that would have soon died from starvation on an unforgetable dangerous journey to discover why all of this happened. He is disturbing and powerful and my favourite character in the whole series. I also loved the way the writers used language, the puns they used, terms and phrases tranformed by the characters young minds. It's a brilliant and chilling first book in these series.

Utterly compelling

The first book in a trilogy, The Kindling is an engrossing read with compelling characters. I immediately felt attached to this "family" of children trying to survive in the aftermath of a plague-like "Fire-Us" that killed off all the adults and was completely caught up in their struggles and hopes. It's a story so absorbing it's tempting to read the book in one sitting. The book, however late it keeps you up, is not only a page-turner, but a richly imagined account of a world that is somehow recognizably ours even as it has been made strange and often menacing. The Kindling plays on the fantasy all children have of being in charge of the world (there's something thrilling about the idea of scavenging for food and salvage in the unpeopled strip malls and abandoned houses of post-apocalypse America without adults to supervise or set rules even as such "hunting" (as it's called in the book) is a life-and-death necessity for these kids), but given the damaged landcape and psychologically scarred inheritors of this world, that fantasy is turned here to something perilous and completely absorbing. That the authors have made this world so strange, familiar, and utterly convincing is a testament to their fine prose and deep powers of imagination. We care about the way their characters must face this world and themselves in order to survive and when they take to the road in search of answers, we go with them, attuned to their every action and nearly breathless for their survival and success. I can't wait for part two!