Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens by Patricia Lauber

Lauber, Patricia. (1986).Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens. New York: Bradbury Press.

Lexile: 830 (3rd grade and up)

Author Credibility:
Lauber acknowledged many of the scientists and naturalists who helped with her research. Many of which read and commented on the book before it was published. This book was named a Newbery Honor book.

Summary:
This book starts by introducing the reader to the sleeping volcano of Mount St. Helens. It chronicles the time up to the famous erruption. Earthquakes were a sign that the volcano was “waking up.” It goes back in time telling of previous erruptions that helped build the volcano up. Graphs are used to illustrate the text. Lauber makes a point to describe the life of the mountain. This will become more important later in the book. Lauber describes how geologists studied the volcano and tried to predict when it would errupt again. Chapter two describes the famous erruption of Mount St. Helens. Pictures show the descruction this erruption caused. The book tells the important work geologist did to try to understand the volcano. Chapter three starts the rebuilding process of life on the volcano. It describes how life quickly started to come back to the volcano. It tells how some things survived and how others came to colonize the recently destroyed area. It describes how plants and animals likely came to the volcano and how they interacted. Chapter four continues with this theme and describes how all of the organisms coming back to the volcano were interlocked. They depend on each other. Finally, chapter five tells the reader information about volcanoes and how they work. Diagrams are used to help illustrate these points. It is important to note that the author describes for the reader how a volcano is important for us.

Standards:
SCIENCE:
*Life Science
*Unifying concepts and processes
*Earth and space science

Illustrations:
The illustrations in this book consist mainly of photographs with captions that describe these photographs. Diagrams and maps are also included in the book to help explain points discussed in the book. The photographs really bring to life and give the reader a clear picture of Mount St. Helens, both the destruction and the new life.

Access Features:
*Table of Contents
*Index
*Photographs with captions
*Diagrams
*Map

How I would use the book in the classroom:
In my classroom I would provide this book for students as they do research on volcanoes. This book provided a lot of useful information that the students could easily look up and find. This book could also be used when studying about the contium of life or how life comes to a barren place.

My response to the book:
This book was very informative. The conversational structure of the book made it easy and fun to read. I loved looking at the pictures. They provided such a great visual for the content of the story. They brought the story to life.

Related Texts:
* Volcanoes by Seymour Simon
* Mount St. Helens: The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano by Rob Carson
* Into the Volcano: A Volcano Researcher at Work by Donna OMeara

Other:
Appropriately the front cover contains a picture of Mount. St. Helens errupting. The book is broken up into chapters. The chapter titles provide the reader a general idea of what the chapter will be about.