Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens

This Newbery Honor book covers the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The book has a good basic explanation of how volcanoes work, along with illustrations, as well as the specific history of Mt. St. Helens. The eruption process and resulting destruction are chronicled not only in words, but also with many many color photographs. The suggested age level of 9-12 years (or 3rd to 6th grade) is right on target. I read selected highlights and looked at the photos with my 7-year-old and 5-year-old. Reading the whole text would definitely have been over the younger one's head. However, my 7-year-old was intrigued by the topic and has read the book by himself many times (reads on a 4th-grade level), frequently shares the most interesting facts from the book, and redraws the maps in the book. This book definitely awakened in him an interest in volcanoes specificially, and natural disasters in general. If you're a child or adult with an especial interest in volcanoes, or in Mt. St. Helens specifically, I would highly recommend this book.

i would always check this book out in elementary school and it's just as good as ever.

This book about Mount St. Helens is really good. It give you alot of information about the silent, still, big and sleepy giant - Mount St. Helens. This sleepy giant was built by many eruptions over thousands of years. The pictures of the mountain are great because they show images before the eruption with green land all over and then after with just molten lava. How the earth spill the hot (magma) rock from inside. A volcano can be very destructitive to the land. The photograph shot from the helicopter shows very little life left like the moon after the explosion from the volcano on the mountain sides. Can you image how beautiful Mount St. Helens was before the eruption and destruction?

This nonfiction book is about volcanoes. It tells about the events leading to the erruption of Mount St. Helens. It describes, in exciting detail, the actual erruption and the eventual rebirth of the volcano. The photographs are great. They help to tell the story along with the words so that you can get a feel for the total destruction and devastation caused by the erruption. The nice thing about the story is that it also includes the rebirth of the volcano and tells of a life cycle that can never be broken.