A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, A Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out
Sep 2025 · Random House Studio
Ebook
304
Pages
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Eligible
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infoThis book will become available on September 9, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
Discover how Mount Tambora's catastrophic eruption plunged the world into darkness, altering the global climate and inspiring the likes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This remarkable story of disaster and survival is brought to life in a thrilling new illustrated novel from the award-winning author of The Mona Lisa Vanishes.
The world was upside-down. The wind was fire. The sky was ash. The rain was rock.
When Mount Tambora, a volcano on the edge of the Indonesian archipelago, erupted in April 1815, it was the largest explosion in recorded history. The land around Indonesia was a hellscape of fire and smoke. In the months and years that followed, the fallout—a cloud of impossibly fine ash— spread through the atmosphere. It killed harvests on the other side of the world. It turned farmers into beggars and their children into orphans. It turned sunsets into molten nightmares.
That same year, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley fled England with poet Percy Shelley. While sheltering from the worst summer in Switzerland’s history, she watched the explosive thunderstorms over Lake Geneva and caught the spark of an idea. Almost overnight, Frankenstein was written.
In this masterful work of middle grade nonfiction, Nicholas Day traces the forward and backward of a single event, weaving in the many people, places, and things that were affected—and created and invented!—as a result, while tackling the ever-worrying issue of climate change.
The world was upside-down. The wind was fire. The sky was ash. The rain was rock.
When Mount Tambora, a volcano on the edge of the Indonesian archipelago, erupted in April 1815, it was the largest explosion in recorded history. The land around Indonesia was a hellscape of fire and smoke. In the months and years that followed, the fallout—a cloud of impossibly fine ash— spread through the atmosphere. It killed harvests on the other side of the world. It turned farmers into beggars and their children into orphans. It turned sunsets into molten nightmares.
That same year, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley fled England with poet Percy Shelley. While sheltering from the worst summer in Switzerland’s history, she watched the explosive thunderstorms over Lake Geneva and caught the spark of an idea. Almost overnight, Frankenstein was written.
In this masterful work of middle grade nonfiction, Nicholas Day traces the forward and backward of a single event, weaving in the many people, places, and things that were affected—and created and invented!—as a result, while tackling the ever-worrying issue of climate change.
About the author
NICHOLAS DAY is the author of The Mona Lisa Vanishes, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction. He is also the author of the picture book Nothing, which received three starred reviews, and the adult narrative nonfiction title, Baby Meets World. He has written regularly for Slate; his work has also appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his family.
YAS IMAMURA is an Asian American illustrator living in Portland, Oregon. Her works include collaborations with Anthropologie and Sanrio, as well as her growing list of children’s books, including Love in the Library by Maggie Takuda-Hall, which received four starred reviews. Her preferred materials are gouache and watercolor and often finds herself drawn to projects that are playful, mysterious, and a little offbeat.
YAS IMAMURA is an Asian American illustrator living in Portland, Oregon. Her works include collaborations with Anthropologie and Sanrio, as well as her growing list of children’s books, including Love in the Library by Maggie Takuda-Hall, which received four starred reviews. Her preferred materials are gouache and watercolor and often finds herself drawn to projects that are playful, mysterious, and a little offbeat.
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