Peak

Isaac and I finally finished another book together-- one of the Rebecca Caudill nominees, Peak by Roland Smith. It's the story of a kid named Peak who loves to climb. His father is a famous mountain climber who has a business leading climbing tours up Mount Everest, his mother is a former climber herself who gave it up when Peak was young and married a lawyer. Peak lives in New York City with his mom, step dad, and twin sisters where he likes to scale (and tag) sky scrappers. When he is caught an arrangement is made for him to leave the country, meaning with his father. He soon learns his father is trying to get him up Mount Everest because if Peak did so, he'd be the youngest person to summit it (and dad's business would boom). On the mountain Peak is able to see his parents' varying degrees of loyalty to him and he is faced with a major, life-alterring decision. It was a great story, action-packed enough for Isaac, with themes and characters engaging enough to hold my interest.

Isaac ended up voting for this book when it was time to vote for which Rebecca Caudill book deserved the award. We hadn't finished reading it yet, but he said he was confident it really was the best. I said, "Really? Better than The Rock and the River?" And he slapped his forehead, saying how he forgot about that... moments later adding Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was another worthy contender. When we got to the end last night, Isaac said no, he was right. This was by far the best book on the nominee list this year. He was standing by the vote he cast weeks ago.