VOLCANOES
by Nell Cross Beckerman ; illustrated by Kalen Chock
A dramatic introduction to volcanic eruptions and those who study them.
“A rumble. / A tremble. / A grumble. / Growing, / growling, / getting hot. / When will it… // POP?!” Blast out, more like, as Chock depicts in grand, painted views of glowing lava bursting upward amid billowing clouds of hot gases from peaks around the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire and elsewhere. In a mix of awed free verse and blocks of prose commentary, Beckerman looks back to notable ones of the past from Krakatoa to a 2022 blast in the Tonga Islands and pays tribute to the intrepid researchers (“Superheroes? Scientists”) who venture onto shoe-melting slopes to study these spectacular “megaphones / of magma.” Backmatter describes the five types of volcanic eruptions. The author discusses hydrothermal vents (which emit hot water rather than hot rock), spotlighting them as the places where life on our planet may have originated. She also directs nods to humongous Olympus Mons on Mars and volcanos elsewhere in the solar system. “Volcanoes / everywhere,” she concludes, are worthy of deep study for the clues they hold both to our past and to what is to come.
A vibrant tribute that pops with strong feeling and riveting art.
(author’s and illustrator’s notes, further reading, the big questions that volcanologists are trying to answer, additional facts) (Informational picture book. 7-9)