Dewey GRAM (2009), Dante’s Peak, A2 Penguin Readers

By Daniel Gonzalez, 1º Bachillerato A, EFL

Harry, an expert in volcanoes, and his boss Paul Dreyfus, go to Dante´s Peak, a small village at the top of a volcano. Everybody thinks there isn´t going to be an eruption, but a few days later the volcano suddenly begins to throw ash and smoke. Harry and Rachel start to help people in the town and in a mine, where they are nearly killed by the volcano, but everybody in the village survives.

I think the best part of the story is when they are all fleeing from Dante´s Peak. You can see what the eviction is like when a volcano eruption happens. I never imagined how fast the lava goes. In a few minutes a volcano can destroy many places, and in this book you can imagine how. The characters have to think fast and to act precisely.

I don´t know exactly which age group I would recommend the book to, but I definitely want to recommend it to my family because every Christmas we go to the Canary Islands, where there are a lot of volcanoes, and I usually climb them. When you read this book you see volcanoes in a different way, not like boring mountains.

Dante’s Peak Movie Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbPYO7rxOag