Hello Readers, Researchers and Educators
My name is Nathan J Rogers,
I’m an Australian children’s author and emergency preparedness educator, I believe important safety lessons can be taught through stories, adventure and memorable characters.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been involved in emergency response, preparedness and community service.
My journey began through volunteer firefighting, including helping at major fire events across Victoria and New South Wales. Over the years, my experience has also grown across bushfire response and recovery, emergency preparedness, first aid, community education and other roles that support people and communities when they need help most.
I’m also the founder of The Bushfire Foundation Inc, an Australian not-for-profit organisation I established in 2015 to help communities become better prepared, better informed and more confident before, during and after emergencies.
- Through this work, I began thinking more and more about children.
- How can we help children understand emergencies without frightening them?
- How can we teach important safety lessons without making everything feel serious, complicated or overwhelming?
For me, the answer was simple: Tell a story.
That idea became the inspiration for my children’s books. Instead of filling young readers with complicated instructions or scary situations, I use stories, adventures and Australian characters to introduce important safety lessons in a way that children can understand, remember and enjoy.
Through my stories, I want children to discover that being prepared can begin with some very simple things:
- Staying calm.
- Stopping and thinking.
- Looking carefully at what is happening around you.
- Listening to important information.
- Speaking clearly and telling others what you notice.
- Working together.
- Being prepared.
- Knowing when it is time to ask an adult or emergency helper for help.
My first Bushfire Buddies adventure, The Great Fire of Gumnut Valley, takes young readers into the Australian bush, where a team of animal friends must work together when a fire threatens their community.
Along the way, the Bushfire Buddies learn about preparation, teamwork, communication, community safety and the importance of listening to official emergency advice.
The characters and places in my books may be imaginary, but many of the ideas and lessons behind their adventures come from real experiences and from what I have learned through years of emergency and community service.
One lesson that is especially important to me is Being a good helper doesn’t mean rushing straight into danger.
- Good helpers prepare.
- Good helpers stop and think.
- Good helpers communicate.
- Good helpers look out for one another.
- And good helpers work together.
As I continue creating new characters, communities and adventures, I want my books to make emergency preparedness easier for children to understand, easier to remember and much less frightening to talk about. But my stories are about more than emergencies.
They are also about the values that help build strong communities.
- Courage.
- Preparedness.
- Responsibility.
- Teamwork.
- Kindness.
- And caring for others.
I hope my characters can help children see firefighters, paramedics, rescuers, emergency-service volunteers and other community helpers as more than just people who arrive when something goes wrong.
They are people who prepare, care for others, work as a team and help their communities become stronger. Most of all, I hope every child who opens one of my books discovers something important:
“You don’t have to be a grown-up to start learning how to be a great helper”
Regards
