Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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.

25 comments:

  1. What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yo this subject is very interesting. Keep it going buddy !

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was an excellently written essay, thank you so much.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Enjoyed reading/following your page.Please keep it coming. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awesome, that’s exactly what I was scanning for! You just spared me alot of searching around

    ReplyDelete
  6. That was an excellently written essay, thank you so much.

    ReplyDelete
  7. very interesting info ! .

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hello. It's good news !

    ReplyDelete
  9. Deeply grateful .

    ReplyDelete
  10. thanks, very good =)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Your site is really good and the posts are just wonderful. Thank you and keep doing your great work.

    ReplyDelete

  12. I am taking the Internet seriously now.

    ReplyDelete

  13. I am amazed with the abundance of interesting articles on your BeST site!

    ReplyDelete

  14. Perfectly composed content, thankyou for entropy:0).

    ReplyDelete

  15. Hiya. Very nice web site!!

    ReplyDelete

  16. Your viewpoint is truly pertinent to my life right now, and Ia€™m really pleased I found your website.:)

    ReplyDelete

  17. Ought to agree you are one of many coolest blogger I ever noticed.

    ReplyDelete

  18. Wonderful work! This is the type of info that should be shared around the net.

    ReplyDelete

  19. Excellent ideas throughout this post, I just added this to my RSS feed. I'm curious if you have any follow ups to this post?:)

    ReplyDelete
  20. No further reviews of Roland Smith books at the moment, but I do have quite a few kid reviews of other books: http://worducopia.blogspot.com/search/label/Kid%20reviews

    ReplyDelete

  21. While could seem confusing but many problems exist from the premise, not the conclusion.

    ReplyDelete

  22. Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I really enjoyed surfing around your blog posts.

    ReplyDelete

  23. You are incredible! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

  24. I’ve enjoyed reading it and pondering the many points you make.

    ReplyDelete