Paul Macleod, age 7, of Duluth, Minn., for his question:

What is Paricutin?

Paricutin was a sleepy country village in Mexico, about 200 miles west of Mexico City. It had been this way for many generations. Then in February 1943, things began to change. Farmer Dionisio Pulido noticed a plume of smoke coming up from a hole in the ground, right in the middle of his corn patch. As the smokey spout grew bigger, the ground trembled with earthquakes and underground explosions. A volcano was being born.

Soon the baby volcano Erupted streams of lava and red hot molten rock. The lava cooled and more lava spilled out on top of it. The pile of cooling rock grew bigger and bigger, and finally it became a mountain that covered the whole village and then spread out over other villages beyond. The volcano and its mountain were named Paricutin for farmer Pulido's lost village. The volcano soon stopped erupting and became quiet, and Paricutin is now a mountain pointing its peak toward the sky.