Book Discussion Guide

Peak by Roland Smith

If you love action and adventure, this is the book for you! After being arrested for climbing a skyscraper, Peak is sent off to live with his father, who is a famous mountain climber. Little does Peak know that he is embarking on the adventure of a lifetime – climbing Mt. Everest! Families will be sucked into Peak’s life-altering experience, as he learns life lessons about friendship and family. In the end, Peak must decide whether fame and recognition are more important than doing the right thing for his family and friends.

Questions To Talk About
While Reading

Vocabulary

It's important to make sure that your child has an understanding of key words in the book. Talking about words while reading is a great way for your child to learn new words.

In this book, you might talk about these words:

parenthetical (pg. 1)
precarious (pg. 3)
remorseful (pg. 19)
undisclosed (pg. 39)
acclimatize (pg. 46)
grist (pg. 86)
auspicious (pg. 93)
reluctantly (pg. 128)
sabotage (pg. 139)
debilitated (pg. 170)
belligerently (pg. 176)
ruse (pg. 190)
regime (pg. 215)
resignation (pg. 233)

You might use a question like:

In the book, what does the word “precarious” mean? How do the sentences surrounding this word help you understand what it means?

Key Ideas and Themes

In addition to words, it's important to talk about key ideas and themes and how they develop over the course of the book.

Here are some examples to get you started:

1
How does the author introduce the story? What does he do to grab your attention and make you want to keep reading? As you talk about this with your child, ask him or her to point out words and phrases the author uses to make the reader feel excited or anxious about what will happen next.
2
What events lead Peak to his adventure on Mt. Everest? Ask your child to describe how Peak moves through each event. For example, how does he respond to the arrest? Talk about his initial response to being sent off to live with his dad and how he reacts when he learns he will climb Mt. Everest.
3
Joshua Wood is a complex character with many flaws and strengths. Ask your child what he or she thinks of him. Then ask: “How does the narrator’s (Peak) opinion of him change throughout the text?” Make sure to think about his perspective at key points of their interactions. For example, when he first sees his dad in New York, when he finds out about Josh’s plans to make him the youngest climber to reach the summit, after he receives his first batch of mail from his family, and the phone call with his mom. Ask your child to describe Peak’s feelings about Josh at the end of the story.
4
Throughout the story, Peak remembers Zopa’s words: You can never tell who the mountain will allow and who it will not. Why is this phrase so important to Peak? What do other peoples’ experiences on Everest, like Holly and Sun-jo’s, tell Peak about the mountain?
5
On page 142 Peak says, “I guess I wasn’t the only one being transformed by the mountain.” As a family, talk about how Peak was changed by his experience on the mountain. How about other characters – how were they transformed by their experiences climbing Mt. Everest? What are some lessons that Peak and the other characters learn by climbing Mt. Everest?
6
One of the themes in Peak is that you can see a person’s true character when they are in life threatening situation. Talk about this theme with your child. How does the author talk about this? Compare the challenges each character faces in the story. How does each respond? What can you learn about what kind of person he or she is based on their response?

Extra Activities

1
What’s great about this story is that it’s written from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy, who is completing a writing assignment for school. In his assignment, he is asked to write a story. Think through how he tells his story and talk about what the author includes at each part. Now, take some notes about a story about one of your own adventures. Prepare it and tell it to your family. Make sure to talk about what you learn about characters, the setting, and major events in each part. Take notes about each of these things and practice talking about or reading each one.

Here are some important parts you can think about when preparing your story:

1. The hook: The beginning of the story, where the author introduces the characters, setting, and conflict. How can you make this exciting for your family and get them interested in your story? You can make this into a question: “Do you guys want to hear about the time I….?”
2. The Setting: Where does the event take place? How can you describe it so your family will really get where you were? How can the setting get people excited about the story?
3. Characters: Who is involved? How can you describe each one so that they are unique and interesting?
4. Rising action: How is the major conflict developing? What other problems are popping up along the way?
5. Climax: Here, the major conflict reaches the height of excitement. At what point in the story does the problem reach a tipping point?
6. Falling action: How is the problem getting close to a solution? What steps are the characters taking to figure it all out?
7. Resolution: At this point in the story, the major problem is no longer a problem, or the characters have learned to deal with it.
8. Denouement: After the conflict is resolved, the author ties up all the loose ends of the story and sometimes gives the reader a sense of what is next or what was learned.