Send a Girl!: The True Story of How Women Joined the FDNY by Jessica M. Rinker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Send a Girl!: The True Story of How Women Joined the FDNY by Jessica M. Rinker Elizabeth Bush Rinker, Jessica M. Send a Girl!: The True Story of How Women Joined the FDNY; illus. by Meg Hunt. Bloomsbury, 2021 [48p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781547601745 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781547601752 $12.59 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad 5-8 yrs For Brenda Berkman, a New York lawyer, her relatively tame desk job lost its shine, so the 1977 announcement that the Fire Department was opening its testing to women for the first time inspired a new goal of undertaking a more active career that would let her directly serve her community. Berkman and other women applicants passed the written test only to be stonewalled at the next level, a physical fitness test that blatantly ignored the tasks actually required on the job. A test that eliminated every female aspirant seemed evidence of bad faith, and Berkman put her lawyering skill to work, filing a lawsuit. It took a few years to wind through the system, but the test was revised, women were admitted to the department, [End Page 273] and then a new chapter in discrimination opened as some members of the public insisted they only trusted men to rescue them, and some male firefighters took collegial pranking to the level of dangerous harassment. In streamlining the story for a young audience, Rinker's narrative and Hunt's digitally colored artwork glide over several specifics (it never makes how initial fitness testing advantaged men), leaving listeners dependent on adult assistance to wrestle information from endnotes not fully up to the task. Still, Berkman's story offers a refreshing twist for "community helpers" units and a tacit invitation to explore Berkman's post-retirement work in advocacy and the arts. A bibliography and website resources are also included. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois