Ash falls on the grass like grey snow, and it does not melt.
That picture is the whole book. Ranger, the golden retriever who travels through time with an old first aid kit, turns up in Viking age Iceland, which is bad ground for a dog with a job to do. He meets Helga, and Helga is more use to him than he is to her for most of the story. A mountain nearby is getting ready to go. Helga's mother's baby has decided to arrive early. The two of them have to cross rough country to find Helga's father while the sky is dropping rock on them.
It is the fifth Ranger in Time book and it is the odd one out. Ranger is normally the rescuer. Here he is mostly the one being rescued, which is the best joke in the series.
The science it actually teaches
That is why it is on our Stealth Science shelf, and the volcanology in it is better than the cutaway diagram your child has seen a hundred times.
Ash is not soot. Magma comes up full of gas, the gas gets out at the top and tears the rock apart on the way, and what falls is rock and volcanic glass milled to a powder. It does not burn, because it has already been through the fire. It does not drift off like woodsmoke. It falls, and then it stays where it fell.
Under a lens it is broken glass. In an eye it scratches. In a set of lungs it is not something the body has any good way of getting back out. Cloth tied over the face is not a superstition, it is the correct response, and it is what people actually did.
Then weight, which is the part nobody expects. Dry ash on a roof is a problem. Wet ash is far worse, because it takes up water and gains weight fast, and roofs come down under it. In a lot of eruptions more people are hurt by roofs than by anything molten.
Then the grass, and this is the Iceland part that matters. A farm family lives on its animals, and the animals live on grass. Ash coats the grass. The animals eat it or they starve on it, and either way the family is in trouble for a lot longer than the eruption lasts. Your child gets to stand in that instead of being told about it.
And the smoke of the title is mostly gas. Volcanic gas is heavier than air. It runs downhill, settles into hollows and low ground, and something lying down in the wrong dip does not get up again. If your child asks why nobody stops walking, that is a real answer.
What the book will not do is tell your child why Iceland in particular sits where it does, or hand over plate tectonics. If that question comes up, it is yours to answer, and it is a good one to be handed.
The child it lands with
Does your child put a book down the second nothing is happening? This one has a mountain on a fuse from about the second chapter, and it does not go out.
It is also the one to reach for if your child likes Vikings but is not ready for what usually comes with Vikings. There are no raids in here. There is a family, a road and the weather, and the weather is made of rock.
One place to stop and talk
The cloth over the face is the moment.
It is not for smoke. It is rock dust, sharp as glass, going into a set of lungs that has no way to get it back out. That is worth thirty seconds and a raised eyebrow, and nothing more.
What to know going in
This is the gentlest of the disaster books in this stretch of the series, and that is worth saying out loud rather than hiding. Nobody your child has come to care about is buried. The threat is weather made of rock, and the tension comes from getting somewhere before it gets worse.
The one thread to know about before you buy: a baby is coming early, in the wrong place, with no doctor and no help inside a day's walk. Childbirth going wrong sits on the page as a real danger. If that is a live subject in your house right now, this is the book to know about in advance rather than to meet at bedtime. Animals are in danger too, which for a certain kind of child is the harder of the two.
Where to get it
Start here. If you are opening this series with a child who does not enjoy being frightened, this is the one to begin with rather than the earthquake book or the hurricane book, because the danger is real and it never has a face.
Ash and Smoke (Ranger in Time #5) is $7.99. It is also the one where the girl keeps saving the dog, which is not nothing if your child has been handed a long run of stories where the animal does everything.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Escape from the Great Earthquake: The Fire Did the Damage
Escape from the Great Earthquake (Ranger in Time #6) by Kate Messner
Grade 2 to 5
Hurricane Katrina Rescue: The Levees, Not the Rain
Hurricane Katrina Rescue (Ranger in Time #8) by Kate Messner
Grade 2 to 5
Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967: Who Fed the Bears
I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967 (I Survived #17) by Lauren Tarshis
Grade 2 to 5
California Wildfires, 2018 in Panels: How Fire Moves
I Survived the California Wildfires, 2018 (I Survived Graphic Novel #13) by Lauren Tarshis
Grade 2 to 5
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
