Vacation Under the Volcano

Vacation Under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne is a Roman adventure for 7 year olds that drops two children into a pretty seaside town on its very last morning.

What happens

Morgan le Fay has a job for Jack and Annie. A story written in Latin is sitting in a library somewhere in the town, and once that library goes, the story goes with it.

So they arrive in an olive grove, dressed as Roman children, looking down at red rooftops and a gentle-looking mountain.

Annie hates it straight away. She had a nightmare about fires and shaking ground. She says she felt the earth rumble. Jack tells her she is imagining things.

Then they notice there are no birds. The stream under the bridge has dried up. And a woman in a black cloak points a bony finger at them and tells them the end is near.

Here is the clever bit. The town is so ordinary. There is a bakery selling flat bread that Annie says looks like pizza, a barbershop with a boy having his hair cut, and a girl trying on new sandals with her mum. Jack keeps saying it is not that different from home. Your reader will be shouting at him.

It is also the one where Annie is the sensible one and Jack is the one who will not leave until he has finished his notes. He even thinks it himself. Usually he is the worried one!

There is a caution here, and it is a real one. The volcano goes off in the middle of the book, not at the end. Roof tiles fall, the floor splits, the sky goes black and everybody runs. Jack and Annie tie pillows on their heads and run too. Earlier they watch chained gladiators being led away, and the research book explains plainly that gladiators were slaves or criminals made to fight each other or wild animals. Annie says out loud that it is not fun.

Nobody is shown being hurt. But this really happened to a real town, and the book does not pretend otherwise. A child who worries about disasters may find it a lot. A child who is already fascinated by Pompeii will be completely gripped.

And it does give them the history without a lesson. You learn what a forum was because Jack is standing in one.

What to read next

If that mixture of real history and real danger goes down well, Earthquake in the Early Morning puts the pair of them on a San Francisco street at five in the morning in 1906, and that city has twenty minutes left of being quiet.