The Volcanic Eruption That Created a Monster

A WORLD WITHOUT SUMMER: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens and the Sun Goes Out, by Nicholas Day; illustrated by Yas Imamura

Located in Indonesia along the Ring of Fire, a nearly 25,000-mile loop of volcanic and seismic activity that borders the Pacific Ocean, Mount Tambora was unusually loud and fierce when it erupted in April 1815. The explosion was heard more than 1,600 miles away, its torrent of burning rock killed almost all life on the island of Sumbawa and in the surrounding waters, and its ash plume rocketed 27 miles high. Tambora also caused widespread hunger and misery around the world for approximately three years, although no one linked the global suffering to the volcano at the time.

Nicholas Day excels at pointing out connections, ironies and paradoxes to young readers, and in “A World Without Summer” he skillfully presents the hard science and long-buried emotions around this disaster. Tambora is for him both a warning about climate instability and an opportunity to discuss the human capacity to reason, create and empathize.

In his Sibert Medal-winning “The Mona Lisa Vanishes” (2023), Day also zigzagged between disparate places, using the 1911 theft of Leonardo’s painting to give readers insight into early-20th-century Paris, late-15th- and early-16th-century Italy, and the enduring mysteries of fame, crime and artistic genius. In this new book, Day steps up to the abyss — Tambora and our own climate crisis — and guides readers through a series of memorable scenes and pertinent questions.

Day explains how the 55 million tons of sulfur dioxide that Tambora hurtled into the stratosphere affected the world when it combined with water vapor and atmospheric motion. The volcanic aerosols initially produced cloudy skies and the gorgeous sunsets that were captured by the painter J.M.W. Turner. Then came the cavalcade of weather-related emergencies.

At first this topsy-turvy world might seem oddly picturesque: “In the English countryside, boats sailed on meadows. In Switzerland, rivers were so high that boats passed over bridges.” But “the seasons had been jarred loose”; the droughts, flooding, wildfires and summer frosts were frightening and dangerous. Eighteen sixteen was widely marked as “the Year Without Summer,” and 1817 was known in Germany as “the Year of the Beggar.” Regions from China’s Yunnan Province to southern Africa to the Indian subcontinent faced famine and disease.

A few areas benefited. Russia was able to harvest its crops and made considerable profits during these years.

Although Day circles back several times to disappointing leaders — the warmongering Napoleon; England’s negligent prince regent; the never-hungry king of Württemberg — the strongest figure in his narrative is Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley). Day gets a little swoony over her, starting with her birth, which claimed the life of her “brilliant, fearless” philosopher mother.

“The month she was born,” Day notes, “a comet split apart the London sky.” And yet it is “Frankenstein,” her “great novel of catastrophe,” that remains the perfect artifact of the era.

Day focuses on Godwin because of the unusual way she was raised (in an intellectually rich household, where she was taught to reason, not obey); because of where and when she wrote “Frankenstein” (stormy Switzerland and England during “the Tambora years” of 1816 and 1817); and because of the novel’s message about the unforeseen consequences of progress. As he puts it, the “horrifying creature” she brought to life “haunts us still.”

“A World Without Summer” includes several tangents to the story of Tambora, because, Day writes, they are “where the hope hides.” Like Yas Imamura’s digital ink and gouache illustrations, they bring variety to an often dismal landscape.

One is the invention in Germany of the first bicycle, which apparently drew much laughter and caused many accidents. (Several decades later, a bicycle with pedals and chains was invented.) Equally useful in the long term were the weather records that began to be kept worldwide, which led to meteorology and climate science.

Day also posits that for the first time those in power decided to help their suffering (and protesting) citizens survive. He wonders if it matters whether the reason for this shift was generosity, fear, self-interest or some combination of these impulses.

Throughout the book, Day emphasizes that he is not an all-knowing narrator. He doesn’t fill in the incomplete historical record. He interrupts his informative chronicle at multiple points with sections called “Some Questions for the Reader, Also Known as You.”

He asks, for instance, if his numerous anecdotes about hungry men, women and children, including the horrible items they had to eat, make their dire situations seem less shocking. He advises, “Pay attention to that feeling that you don’t need to pay attention.”

As he did in “The Mona Lisa Vanishes,” Day calls out misinformation — for example, an Italian astronomer’s prediction in 1816, fueled by alarm over sunspots, of the imminent “end to the world by conflagration.” At the same time, he laments that while we (unlike those in the 19th century) know how and why our climate is changing, we often minimize and cast aside this knowledge.

“A World Without Summer” begins with the earth “turned inside out” but ends with a sharp and vivid argument for how to get back to stable common ground: Act on scientific evidence and don’t forget that “those who were suffering” in the aftermath of Tambora “deserved to survive” — as do the people who will suffer as our climate crisis gets worse.

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