You couldn’t touch the floor. Everywhere you put your foot down, there was lava. It would burn you up! It was total danger! Everybody knew it, which is why you climbed from sofa to chair to cushion in an effort to not touch the floor. Mom was never totally happy when you pretended that lava filled the living room but she deep-down understood, as in “Adventures in Volcanoland” by Tamsin Mather, that molten rock is nothing to trifle with.

Indeed, the first time Tamsin Mather “stood up close to a lava flow … I felt the heat get too much …” That heat, she hints, is more than you’d probably expect, even if you brazenly think you’re prepared.

Think: standing amid flames. Think: hotter than this summer’s been.

To understand how volcanoes are created, you’d need to travel many kilometers beneath Earth’s surface, past several levels of atmospheric pressure and extreme (“thousands of degrees”) heat that only gets hotter the lower you go. On second thought, don’t go because, at some level, you may find that the planet’s inner layers have cracked or shifted (because Earth is solid-not-solid), causing large chambers of melted rock in the form of roiling, boiling magma to escape, ready to bubble up through a crater in the ground.

No, seriously, it wouldn’t be a fun trip. Read that again: underground heat melts rock.

Throughout history, in fact, volcanoes have killed a lot of people. In 1902 alone, for instance, volcano blasts, rock and lava killed at least 32,000 people in three different places in South America and the West Indies, in the space of a few months. Furthermore, “The landscape was transformed,” says Mather. Even now, more than a century later, studying that which ejected from those volcanoes gives volcanologists “important clues” that might help predict “future behavior of volcanoes…” But can a few old lava fields offer enough info to head off mass destruction?

Yes, says Mather.

“To reconstruct… past cataclysms, we must read the rocks left behind…. It’s all there, written in the landscape, once you know how to decipher it.”

So you’re having a hot, hot summer. Record-breaking temps, humidity you can almost cut. And it could be hotter, as you’ll read in “Adventures in Volcanoland.”

Settle down in the air conditioning, as author Tamsin Mathers takes you on a deep and rather technical look at geology, oceanography and volcanology, in a way that almost – almost – requires a PhD. This book is, in other words, not a breezy beach-read; instead, it’s interesting in a different direction, asking you to go underground, travel the world, and peer over the edge of a volcano’s crater. In that, Mather’s enthusiasm for her subject is infectious, and it may spur you to find a way to see volcanoes for yourself.

A super-savvy young (13-to-17-yearold) volcano lover may enjoy this book, but it’s really meant for adults who want a different kind of scientific adventure. If that’s you and you want to catch fire for this fascinating subject, “Adventures in Volcanoland” may absolutely floor you.

— The Bookworm Sez