BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSFourteen-year-old Peak Marcello is writing this account for a year-end school assignment, filling two notebooks while riding through Tibet. He begins with the event that changes everything, climbing the Woolworth Building in New York City late one night and tagging its wall with a small stenciled blue mountain, his sixth secret skyscraper climb. Sleet and wind nearly strand him near the top before police haul him over the roof railing and arrest him. The stunt makes headlines, and things get much worse when a boy who was copying Peak's climbs falls to his death trying the same thing. Facing years in juvenile detention, Peak gets an unexpected way out. His biological father, Joshua Wood, a famous but distant mountaineer he has barely seen in seven years, steps into the courtroom and offers to take him far away from New York, straight into the middle of a very different kind of climb.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Peak
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Peak. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an English teacher bring a jailed student two black Italian notebooks?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
Vincent visits the juvenile detention center and sets the two Moleskines on the table like sacred texts, pointing out that Hemingway and Picasso used the same brand. Filling one of them is the last requirement for finishing the school year, and it becomes the story you are reading.
- First half
In what book are climbers warned never to dig up yellow snow to melt for drinking water?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
Everest Base Camp turns out to be nothing like the pristine place the narrator imagined. It is a frozen garbage dump of sardine cans, busted gear, and toilet paper blowing around the tents like tumbleweed, because nobody strays far from their tent at ten below zero.
- First half
In what book does a backward "sey" appear in the fog inside a sealed rescue bag?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
Francis has a severe case of HAPE and is zipped inside a Gamow bag, which gets pumped full of air to imitate sea level pressure. Josh shouts through the bag to ask if he is still with them, and the answer arrives written in the condensation on the little window.
- Second half
In what book does a boy ride up a mountain concealed beneath hay on a yak?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
Sun-jo has to get past the Chinese soldiers without being seen, so Gulu buries him under the hay loaded on his yak. Peak walks beside that yak part of the way and never suspects a thing until Sun-jo turns up at Intermediate Camp ahead of him.
- Second half
In what book does a mother fall while imagining a rattlesnake near her baby's car seat?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
On the satellite phone, Peak's mom admits she quit climbing because of him and not because of her fall. She lost focus on a loose rock that day because she was picturing a snake reaching her baby below, and she wants Peak to understand how deadly a divided mind is up high.
- Near the end
In what book does a cowboy from Abilene drawl "Speak of the devil" as a boy walks in?
✓ Answer
Peak by Roland Smith
Peak walks into the mess tent starving and finds ten climbers holding a private meeting about him. The greeting sounds friendly and is completely hostile, because the paying clients have just learned that Josh plans to put his own son on the summit.
