WORD LISTS

"I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980" by Lauren Tarshis, Chapters 1–7

Mon Sep 18 09:51:46 EDT 2023
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
In this fourteenth book of the historical fiction I Survived series, eleven-year-old Jessie Marlowe and her best friends go into a Washington forest to look for proof of a legendary Skeleton Woman and end up shaken.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–7, Chapters 8–16
molten
It was a dangerous volcano, a deadly cone filled with molten rock and poisonous gases.
peak
St. Helens rose up over them, its perfect triangle peak sparkling with snow.
pelt
Hot rocks pelted her like bullets shooting down from the sky.
shard
Then, whoosh, a blast of wind exploded out of the mountain, a white-hot mix of ash and gas and shards of rock.
avalanche
The eruption had shattered the mountain, and now a fifty-mile-wide avalanche of rock and mud and melted ice was taking aim at the valley below.
lurk
According to the old legend, she lurked in the dark forests that covered the slopes of St. Helens, the mountain that rose up over this whole valley.
insist
“That’s not true,” Jess said.
“They saw her, Jess!” Missy insisted.
scoff
“It’s just a dumb story,” Eddie scoffed.
pang
She felt a pang of guilt.
smoldering
So it was good to have other things to think about, like an evil old witch with smoldering black eyes.
loom
And it wasn’t as tall as Mount Rainier, which loomed over Seattle, about two hundred miles to the north of Cedar.
range
But folks who lived here knew St. Helens was the most beautiful mountain in the Cascade Range.
bicker
Right away, they started bickering about who was the best pitcher on the Seattle Mariners.
optimism
And the way he looked at Jess, his eyes bright with hope, she didn’t doubt it.
Maybe he’d gotten his optimism from his granddad Clive Marlowe.
agony
He dreaded the moment when a tree started to fall over, how its wood would moan and creak as though it was crying out in agony.
teeter
Thinking about all of this made Jess feel dizzy, as if she was teetering at the edge of a cliff.
practically
Jess could practically hear a croaking voice whispering to her.
smirk
But then she pictured Missy’s smirk.
brace
Jess braced herself for a hideous scream, for two rusty-clawed hands to reach out and pull her into the darkness.
stagger
The walls trembled and the floor rolled up and down under their feet. Jess staggered and fell to her knees.
buck
The ground bucked up and down. The trees swayed back and forth violently.
clod
Clods of dirt flew up.
huddle
Jess and the twins huddled close together, their heads ducked down low, their arms wrapped tight around each other.
burly
He came rushing up the trail, moving his burly body way faster than Jess ever thought he could.
seismology
“Dr. Timothy Morales,” Mr. Rowan read, “Department of Seismology, University of Washington. You study earthquakes? Well, you came to the right place today.”
dormant
“But no. St. Helens is not extinct. It’s just been dormant, which means it’s been quiet.”
ridge
“Cedar is up on a ridge. And I don’t think any of the eruptions have reached this far. It’s a safe place."
surge
And I worry about the pyroclastic surge. That’s a wave of hot air that explodes out of the volcano.
devastating
That’s a wave of hot air that explodes out of the volcano. It’s truly devastating. That’s what happened in the eruption of Mount Pelée.
grim
“I don’t know if you want to hear about that,” Dr. Morales said. “It’s a grim story.”

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