Climbing the Volcano

Climbing the Volcano by Curtis Manley, with illustrations by Jennifer K. Mann (Holiday House, New York: Neal Porter Books, 2024). 48 pages, 11.25" x 8.25", glossy full-color cover and interior, hardback. For ages 4–8. ISBN 978-0-8234-5166-1. $18.99 from booksellers.

Curtis Manley’s Climbing the Volcano is a rare children’s book from a mainstream publisher that gets haiku right. But this is no surprise when Curtis is a longtime member of Haiku Northwest. No trivial syllable counting here, and the poems offer much seasonal and sensory awareness, integrated into the common two-part structure. As the author writes in a short note about haiku at the back, “The interaction of the separate images or ideas in the two parts can surprise the reader—and can make a haiku very powerful even though it is such a short poem.”

     Joining Curtis by providing illustrations is Jennifer K. Mann, whose disarming and accessible artwork welcomes readers of all ages—the boy in the story looks over his shoulder at the reader on the front cover, as if to say, come along! It’s clear from the images that children and their caregivers are invited not just to join the hike but to visit a specific place to climb a volcano. This isn’t just a generic hike.

     Indeed, that’s this book’s primary strength. Just as haiku offer specific personal experiences, so too this book is about a hike to the top of the South Sister, a dormant volcano in central Oregon. The flora and fauna in both poems and illustrations carefully depict a summer trip to this distinctive mountain in the Cascade Range. The poems begin at a campsite at dawn and show a snowfield and a picturesque lake along the way as a small family shares their hike with others heading up the mountain—a vigorous round trip of 12 miles, with an elevation gain of nearly 5,000 feet, all the way up to the 10,363-foot summit.

     The haiku themselves are not complex but have a warm feeling as if a thoughtful child had written them, deftly shifting focus to the book’s narrative rather than the technicalities of advanced haiku. We can easily believe that the child in the story wrote these poems. For example, “branching trails— / I choose the one / with three butterflies” shows the child’s delight and attention—and not just for butterflies but three of them. “I made it / to the summit— / jumping even higher” celebrates the boy’s achievement with childlike joy and pride.

     The book features 50 haiku, with an especially pleasing final poem. Mosquitoes appear near the start and return at the end. The red summit seen from the campsite is amplified in a later poem as being not just dawn light but red volcanic cinders underfoot. An owl implied in one poem is present in the adjacent illustration, but only as a very small discovery for readers who look carefully.

     An invigorating sense of discovery pervades this book. The butterflies and melting snow at the highest elevations come as a surprise both to the boy in the story and to readers. Other creatures mentioned in the poems include bobcats, marmots, red-tailed hawks, and ravens, along with such regional trees as mountain hemlock and Sierra lodgepole pine. Rounding out the book is a list of hiking essentials (such as GPS, a first-aid kit, and a notebook for writing haiku), together with information on the area’s geology and an educational history of the South Sister volcano. This is a gently inspiring book about haiku hiking, but also practical and informative—and beautiful to look at. Come along, indeed!