A few years ago men on a ship in the ocean saw the water bubbling and boiling. They went closer. Night came before they had seen very much. But in the morning they saw an island where there had been no island before.

It was a very hot island, with smoke, steam, and fire.

 Actually, the island was the top of a mountain that had been growing up from the floor of the ocean and had poked through the water into the air.

How does a mountain grow?

If the mountain is a volcano, it is easy to see how it grows. A volcano starts from a hole in the ground from which hot rock and smoke and steam come out. Far, far under the ground it is so hot that rock melts. This hot melted rock, or lava, is sometimes pushed out of the earth through a hole or a crack in the ground. The steam inside the earth pushes the rock out.

 As more and more rock comes out, it makes a pile that becomes a mountain. Sometimes the rock flows out like hot mush. Sometimes it is shot out in big chunks of hard rock. The more stuff that comes out, the higher the mountain grows.

If the mountain is growing under the ocean, it becomes an island when it reaches the top of the water. The little island that the men saw from the ship started this way. So did the big Hawaiian Islands and the enormous island of Iceland.

Not many years ago in Mexico, a little boy and his father discovered a volcano growing in a cornfield. Smoke puffed up, and rock started popping up out of a crack that opened in the ground.

The boy thought the cornfield was throwing rocks at him! He picked one up. It was hot. He dropped it and ran away frightened. Smoke and rock continued to come from the crack in the ground.

A new volcano was being born.

The volcano in the cornfield grew until it was bigger than the cornfield! Black smoke puffed out. Hot ashes fell like black snowflakes. Hot rock and fire and lava shot out. People called the volcano the Little Monster because it grew so fast. Scientists came from all over the world to study it and watch it grow. It is not often that people get a chance to watch a volcano from the very beginning.