Peak by Roland Smith

I gave this book a rating of four out of five. Peak is an adventurous teenage boy who enjoys climbing man-made structures and painting graffiti on them as his signature. However, Peak gets caught and arrested. His famous, mountain-climbing father shows up to take Peak to Nepal where he wants his son to become the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest. This adventure is deadly dangerous and is complicated by presence of the Chinese army. Has Sherpa named Zopa helps Peak and his father, but he's not telling them the whole truth; he's up to something.

The conflict of the book begins between Peak and his father, but the focus changes to the dangers of climbing Mt. Everest as the book progresses. I'm a life-long learner, so I enjoyed finding out about the skills and strategy needed to climb a mountain. The book becomes more exciting as the climbing party nears the top of the mountain and the dangers become more extreme. Readers who are not willing to learn a little about the sport of mountain climbing probably won't enjoy the book, but I found it very entertaining. It's more than a mountain climbing book, but that is the central action.

Lexile level from lexile.com 760