No Summit Out of Sight by Jordan Romero

No Summit Out of Sight is an inspirational YA memoir about mountain climbing. This young adult non-fiction book is perfect for teens for a required high school summer reading assignment. I used No Summit Out of Sight last year for my assignment, and it worked very well.

This story features Jordan Romero, the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits at the ages of 10-15. The Seven Summits are the tallest mountains in all seven continents of the world. When Jordan Romero was in fourth grade, he saw a mural at his school showing all of them. He thought about how cool it would be to stand on the top of all of them, seeing the world. And thus, his goal began. With the help of his parents joining along, he eventually became the youngest person to climb all seven. This book is his inspirational account of all the hard work and determination it took to succeed.

This book is great for assigned summer reading tasks because the book has a simple plot with easy to understand language and concepts. The characters are clear and easy to interpret. There's not much reading in between the lines that is needed to write a good analytical essay on No Summit Out of Sight, as tidbits of inspirational quotes are on nearly every page and the narrator writes down all of his thoughts and observations.

The book felt too good to be true. It also felt more like a timeline of events than a story and lost my interest at times. The book is not very deep, and is lacking three-dimensional characteristics. It could have been written better and contained some details that were not relevant to the main idea, but it is still a fun read on your own time.

This book is very inspirational and teaches lessons about goal setting, breaking huge goals into smaller steps, thinking positively, and celebrating small victories. These are just some of the messages gained from reading this book. Physically, this journey was exhausting and when his body wanted to give up, his mind saved him. The fierce determination he had to complete his goal proved that "mind over matter" really does exist. No Summit Out of Sight is very relatable to kids all around the world, given that he started his goal at just the age of 10.

I recommend this book!

Title: No Summit Out of Sight
Author: Jordan Romero
Publisher: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pages: 368
Series: No
Rating: 4 Stars
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