Volcano
front flap back flap Annotation goes here Animals in the book include: Free online resources and support for the book at www.sylvandellpublishing.com include: For Creative Minds as seen in the book (in English & Spanish): Teaching Activities: Reading Questions Math Language Arts Geography Science Coloring Pages Interactive Quizzes: Reading Comprehension, For Creative Minds, and Math Word Problems English and Spanish Audiobooks Related Websites Aligned to State Standards (searchable database) Accelerated Reader and Reading Counts Quizzes Lexile and Fountas & Pinnell Reading Levels ebooks with Auto-Flip, Auto-Read, and selectable English and Spanish text and audio available for purchase online. Thanks to author bio illustrator bio Names are in bold SD titles are bold, italics other titles are italics Volcano We ll digitally make a title page from interior art. by Terry Catasús Jennings illustrated by Laurie O Keefe use same font as title about 20 with auto leading Terry Catasús Jennings Laurie O Keefe
Is there anyway to make this a spread? Important that this be a good attention grabber! Watch animal sizes/perspectives...rabbit looks mighty large compared to the bear... Something is different on the mountain. Snowshoe Hare hears the rumble from miles away. Black Bear feels the ground shake beneath her paws. Gopher just digs and digs in his burrow.
I like the feeling of the gopher underground here, feels a good safe distance from the volcano, (if that makes any sense). If art is not a spread here, it needs to be obvious. This feels like the animals are part of the art on the next page (especially the way they are looking). Squirrel seems big compared to elk. Maybe this could be a spread too with the elk further back in the distance? Smoke bursts from the top the mountain. Elk has never seen this before. Squirrel sees black smudges on the snow-white mountain top. Gopher digs and digs in his burrow. The rumblings go on for days. The mountain is growing. A volcano is waking up. But Gopher just digs and digs in his burrow.
Early one morning, Snowshoe Hare, Black Bear, Elk, Squirrel, and every animal near and far, (even Gopher), feel rumbling and trembling and shaking more terrible than they ve ever felt before. Some animals hear a terrible sound. Others hear nothing. The mountain blows its top! Snow and rock slide down the mountain. A huge explosion blows down all the trees. The top of the mountain disappears in a cloud of ash and rock. The volcano is erupting!
Even though they are not close, Snowshoe Hare, Black Bear, Elk, Squirrel, and all the animals that can, run away from the mountain. The day turns black as night. Hot, fierce wind surrounds them. Lightning fills the air. A blizzard of hot ash covers their fur. This action (of all of them) needs to move towards the right. Watch animal sizes/perspectives...rabbit looks mighty large compared to the bear... We can probably remove the animals from the top left here to give more room for text. Note to me: verify lightning???
Animals are killed by the explosion or ash they just can t breathe. Miles away, Snowshoe Hare, Black Bear, Elk, and Squirrel find themselves in a different world. Gopher is safe in his burrow, with plenty of tasty roots and bulbs to eat. Let s make this a spread with the gopher underground and the ash-covered landscape on top...a few dead animals but not so many and not as obvious...
When the shaking stops and the roar quiets, Gopher begins to dig again. He digs through soil and then he digs through ash gritty, warm ash, sands, and pebbles. He wonders, Where did all this stuff come from? When he reaches the surface, he doesn t know where he is. Instead of the cool, damp, needle-covered forest, blown-down tree skeletons cover the landscape like toothpicks. Stumps are everywhere. The world is gray and dry and hot. I don t think we need to show him digging his way out. This is such a powerful illustration...it needs to take up the entire page! Keep him looking to the left, this is a moment for kids to pause and contemplate...
This might be a good page to have several small vignettes focused on each of the animals...if we do that here, we need to do another page or two of vignettes somewhere else in the book to balance it out. Maybe the gopher s vignette can show the dirt mixing with the ash? Is Gopher the only life that survived? No. From his home under a rotten log, Mouse sticks out his nose. He s confused. But the tree is food and home for Mouse... and for Beetle too. Ant crawls around on the hot, dry mountain s crust. She finds plenty of food in the dead wood and plenty of places to hide. Mouse, Beetle, and Ant have food and shelter. They can still live on the mountain. Gopher keeps digging because that s what gophers do. Even if his world has changed, Gopher digs and digs. As he digs, he mixes the soil from his tunnels with the ashes. He makes the ground softer, and cracks the mountain s new hard crust. Gopher helps the mountain recover.
Insects return to the mountain, flying in on the wind. Spiders float in on silken threads. Seeds blow in from plants near and far. When seeds fall on small islands of soil among the rocks, on soil where the ash was washed away by water, and on the rich soil that Gopher dug, they send down roots and grow into plants. No diagonals across the gutter on this page! This should definitely be a spread!
Birds fly over to peek at the mountain. When they see a tasty bug, they stay a while. They munch on seeds that have not yet grown into plants. They perch on small islands of plants and flowers that survived the blast. But there are no places to nest. Birds can t live on the mountain, not yet. No reason for this to be broken up...spread will work.
Time passes. Elk explores the mountain. There is nothing left of the cool damp forests and green meadows he loved. He finds a few saplings that survived, protected from the explosion by the snow. They re a little snack, but they re not enough. He stays in the forests nearby the forests that were not damaged by the heat, or the rocks, or buried under the ash. He stays there with Snowshoe Hare, Black Bear, Squirrel, and many other animals. They ll return when there s plenty of food to eat and places to rest and hide. They will return to live on the mountain someday, but not today. No reason for this to be broken up...spread will work.
Salamanders and toads, under the ice in a lake high on the mountain, survive the blast. When it s time for them to live their life on dry land, the world they find is dry and hot. They use Gopher s tunnels to find shade and get around in the hot, dry landscape. Gopher is glad for the company. He still digs and digs, softening the ground as he digs, making it easier for seeds to sprout, for plants to grow, and for other animals to find food and shelter on the mountain. Maybe show underground with lake in background?
Months pass. Hemlock and fir saplings sprout. Fireweed and lupine bushes grow. Birds, elk and other animals visit. There are more seeds and plants to eat, more places to find shelter. Gopher still digs and digs, looking for new roots and bulbs to eat; making the ground soft for seeds to grow. No reason for this to be broken up...spread will work.
Years pass. The saplings have grown into trees. Bushes dot the landscape. Elk, Squirrel, Snowshoe Hare, and Black Bear have returned to the mountain. It will take many, many years for the mountain to return to what it was before. Some areas may never be as they were before the big blast. But of one thing we can be sure: Gophers will still dig and dig... and the mountain will continue to change.