Earthquakes and Volcanoes (Earth Science) Book

The fourth volume in a series of eight books about earth science published by Grolier Educational, Earthquakes and Volcanoes focuses excessively on dry scientific terminology and largely fails to engage readers in the content. The book is divided into four chapters; the first explains how seismic waves travel and the movements of tectonic plates, the second discusses types of faults and how they shape the earth's landscape, the third explains how activity beneath the earth's surface forms volcanoes, and the fourth explores different types of volcanic eruptions. Illustrations consisting of a mixture of diagrams, maps, and photographs are largely helpful in expanding upon ideas from the text and explaining concepts in a visual manner, and the photos of volcanic eruptions are especially striking. However, the text itself is rather dull, since large sections are focused on defining terms without making any connections with preceding or subsequent ideas. Since this book has a scientific focus, it is not surprising that there is very little said about how earthquakes and volcanic eruptions affect humans, but including elements of human interest might engage readers more in the content. The book also contains some issues with organization and clear expression of ideas. While the first chapter contains an intriguing introductory paragraph that grabs readers' attention by saying that a volcano will erupt and an earthquake will happen in the time that it takes to read the book, there is no introduction to the third chapter on volcanoes that serves as a transition between the chapters on earthquakes and the chapters on volcanoes to show how the two subjects are related. In addition, the book ends very abruptly after a specific description of Crater Lake in Oregon, with no conclusion whatsoever. The book also assumes that readers have some background earth science knowledge and does not explain the meanings of some key terms. For example, the chapters on volcanoes contain frequent mentions of silica in magma and volcanic rock, but there is no explanation of what silica is. There are a few typos ("Ancorage" for "Anchorage," for example), and some issues with confusing sentence structure obscure meaning as well. Finally, the glossary and index are for the entire eight-volume series, not just for this book, resulting in an intimidatingly long glossary and an index that may be useful for readers interested in the entire series, but that is not easy to navigate for a casual reader who is simply interested in volcanoes and earthquakes. This book and the other books in the series, which appear from a quick glance to be written in a similar style, are recommended as references for students writing reports on earth science topics, but not as texts for students to read cover to cover to kindle their excitement about earth science. Target Audience: Ages 12-16