Peak--Roland Smith (Book Review)

After Peak Marcello is arrested for scaling a New York City skyscraper, his long-lost father offers to bring him to live in Thailand. But Peak's father's real plan is for Peak to bring publicity to his climbing company, by being the youngest person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.

Peak looked like the kind of book that would appeal to my action-loving boys, and it was nominated for the Oregon Book Award, so I picked it up for us to read aloud. As might be expected, it being a YA book and my boys being eight and eleven, it was a little slow going. There were sentences we had to stop and reread, and technical details about mountain climbing and Mt. Everest that were explained well enough for the average YA reader but not for the average 8-year-old. Because of those things, Evan could only listen to about 10-12 pages at a time, as compared to 30-40 pages of, say, Harry Potter.

We pushed through it, though, as Evan defied my expectations each time I suggested reading a chaper, ready for his announcement that he'd grown tired of the story and was ready to switch books. It never came. And yesterday I came across two boys "mountain climbing" up the side of the couch. Evan was Sun-Jo, the 14-year-old Tibetan refuge who climbs with Peak. Ben traded off between being Peak and being Zopa, the wise former-Sherpa-turned-Buddhist-monk who helps lead the climb. They haven't been inspired to play that way in a long time.

After we finished the book, we had a little book talk for the purposes of this review. Despite the couch mountain-climbing episode, I truly had no idea what the answer would be to my first question: Did you like the book?
Evan: Like it? Yeah!
Ben: Yeah. I've never read a book about climbing a mountain before.
Evan: It didn't make me want to ever climb a mountain.
Ben: No way.
There is definitely no romanticization of the Everest climb in this book. It sounds cold, scary and miserable. A great setting for a read-aloud while huddled under blankets, drinking hot tea.

Ali: Who were your favorite characters?
Evan: Peak, because he made good decisions
Ben: Zopa and Sun-jo, because Sun-Jo's always polite and he seems like a nice person to be around. Zopa because he's mysterious.
Ali: What did you think of his dad?
Evan: Sometimes he was a real jerk
Ben: He didn't seem much like a dad. He didn't act like he wanted Peak to be his son.
This illustrates my main criticism of the book. Peak has a great character arc, but the lesser characters don't. I was looking for a cathartic moment between Peak and his father, Josh, and it never came to my satisfaction. In fact, there were many opportunities for Peak to bond with various characters and, while Peak tells us that he's starting to like Holly the obnoxious reporter, or that he forgives Sun-Jo, something is missing. I wanted movie moments between these characters and they never came. Did my boys miss the movie moments? No, they were more caught up in the action than I was, so they didn't see the gap that I did. But I would have liked for them to come away from the book with a better understanding of Josh's character flaws and how he overcame them. Instead, they came away with "he was a jerk."

But, they also came away with an appreciation for what the characters went through, a fairly challenging (for their age bracket) book under their belts, and an enthusiastic recommendation of this book for others.

For more information about Roland Smith check out his website at RolandSmith.com. He even has free downloadable curricula to be used with Peak and several of his other books. The Soundtrack: This is My Everest, by The Swellers. In the song, just like in the book, Everest is a metaphor for nearly insurmountable obstacles that must be either overcome or bypassed before moving forward.

Have you reviewed this book also? Let me know, and I'll add a link here.