The Sunbonnet Babies in Italy
Eulalie Osgood Grover
MP3 CD
(IDB Productions, March 15, 2019)
The Sunbonnet Babies in Italy THE ARRIVAL AT NAPLES "See that smoking mountain, Molly! Look! I believe it is a volcano. It is Mount Vesuvius. Yes, I know it is Mount Vesuvius!" May, the Sunbonnet Baby, was talking with Molly, her little Sunbonnet Baby sister. They were standing on the deck of a great ocean steamer. They had been sailing on the steamer for days and days. They had sailed more than four thousand miles away from their home in America. Now they were almost at the end of their journey. They would very soon be in Italy. The big steamer was moving slowly up the beautiful Bay of Naples, straight toward the busy, noisy city of Naples. Rising from the shore, not far away, was the smoking mountain of Vesuvius, about which the Sunbonnet Babies' father had told them such strange stories. He told them that Mount Vesuvius was like a great kettle full of boiling rock, that sometimes the fire under the kettle becomes so hot it boils over, covering the mountain sides and even the plains with melted rock and hot ashes. Such mountains, he said, are called volcanoes. Molly and May stood on the deck of the steamer eagerly watching the smoking volcano, wondering if it would ever boil over again. "I almost wish it would boil over now!" cried Molly. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to see red-hot rock come right out of the top of the mountain and fall down all around it!" "Yes, it would be wonderful," said May, "but I am sure I don't want to see it. The hot ashes might even reach us here on the steamer."