With a wide variety of poems, the picture book Volcano Wakes Up! by Lisa Westberg Peters (illustrated by Steve Jenkins; Henry Holt, 2010) shows the plants, crickets, and road having a conversation as a sleepy volcano “wakes up.” Based on volcanoes on the Hawaiian Islands, this book reminds readers that the Hawaiian Islands are active volcanoes.
Each narrator adds to the conversation with a poem in a different style. The sun speaks with an acrostic, the volcano poems appear in a shape, and the road poems appear with a line on each street sign. The insect poems are spelled like text messages, and the fern poems are a general free verse, but unique in tone compared to all the other poems. Not only does Volcano Wakes Up! teach a little bit about volcanoes and the environment in which they erupt, but it also models unique voices for a student to use as a model of a variety of poetic styles.
