A Trip To the Top of the Volcano with Mouse

April 15, 2019
In this follow-up to A Trip to the Bottom of the World with Mouse, a young explorer and his impatient rodent friend hike up Sicily’s Mt. Etna. Mouse has one thing on his mind—pizza—but the hiker fulfills his mission to reach the top, relaying some highlights of volcanology along the way. (A cutaway illustration midway through the book offers a helpful visual summation of things growing on the slope and within the cone.) Mouse enthusiastically, sometimes fearfully, lists things the duo encounters while ascending dramatic landscape (“Steam! Black Rock! Deep Vents! Lava!”), while the descent finds him in a tizzy about numerous predators lurking at the lower slope (“Snakes, eeeek!”). But after gaining his pizza reward—a large, with pepperoni—he’s ready to go again. Fiery reds and oranges appropriately dominate the crisply drawn artwork, and plenty of expressive type and dialogue balloons will hold readers’ attention. Framing by Viva is unfussy but effective, from the quarter panels used to convey nuggets of information to the spreads that open up the landscape and make every inch of the book’s long horizontal format count. Ages 3–up.