Magnus lives and works at the Broadway Firehouse. He knows that when the fire alarm clangs, he and his partners, Billy and Sparks, are supposed to spring into action. Without them the firemen would never be able to move the gigantic steam pumper. And without a pumper the crew wouldn't be able to put out fires. Then one day the captain drives into the firehouse on a loud, newfangled contraption called a motorized fire truck. It doesn't need horses to pull it to a fire. So just like that, Magnus, Sparks, and Billy are out of a job. A little history, a little humor, and a whole lot of heart are artfully blended in this rousing tale of one high-spirited horse who can't accept being put out to pasture. And thank goodness! Because it's this steadfast sense of duty that ultimately saves the day.
Author
Jennifer Armstrong learned to read and write in Switzerland, in a small school for English speaking children on the shores of Lake Zurich. The school library had no librarian and no catalog – just shelves of interesting books. She selected books on her own, read what she could, and made up the rest. It was perfect. As a result, she made her career choice – to become an author – in first grade. When she and her family returned to the U.S. she discovered that not all children wrote stories and read books, and that not all teachers thought reading real books was important. Nevertheless, she was undaunted. Within a year of leaving college she was a free-lance ghost writer for a popular juvenile book series, and before long published her first trade novel, Steal Away, which won her a Golden Kite Honor for fiction. More than fifty additional novels and picture books followed, and before long she also tried her hand at nonfiction, winning an Orbis Pictus Award and a Horn Book Honor for her first nonfiction book, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. In late 2003 she will travel to the South Pole with the National Science Foundation to do research for a book on ice.
