Roland Smith (1) (1951–)

The Big News: ROLAND SMITH IS COMING TO MY SCHOOL! I am so excited, and so are my students. This year I am spending every penny of my author visit budget on Mr. Smith -- you gotta have a really big-name author every once in awhile, right? So, in view of his upcoming visit, I thought I had better read some of his books.

This is a terrific book for middle grade (5th grade and up) students who want a fast-paced, intelligent, current-events-based thriller. Young Q (short for Quest) and his new show more stepsister Angela are getting to know one another on a giant tour bus after their respective parents' (his mom, her dad) whirlwind courtship, record deal, concert tour, and marriage. While crossing the country, however, Angela realizes she is being followed, and the two new siblings are drawn into an international web of intrigue involving the Secret Service, the Israeli Mossad, a rogue band of former intelligence operatives, and US-based terrorism cell. The book is 8 years old, but could be set in 2016. It is smart, character-driven, and very twisty, touched by personal grief that is poignant but never overdone, and involves Angela's mother, thought to be killed by a terrorist group, but possibly alive after all. A one-sitting kind of book. show less

This was the first book I've read by Roland Smith although I own several. I've always considered him an author who writes just for boys and avoided reading his books, but I was wrong. I really enjoyed this fast-paced tale laced with action, mystery, and political intrigue.
The book begins with the wedding of Roger and Blaze who make up a musical group called Match that has just landed a hit song and are getting ready to tour the country. The story is about their teenage children. Angela is show more Roger's daughter, and Quest or Q for short is Blaze's son. With Blaze and Roger about to embark on US tour, Q and Angela find their lives in upheaval. While trying to get to know each other better, Angela reveals that her mother was a Secret Service agent killed in the line of duty. Seemingly out of nowhere, Boone, a scruffy looking former roadie, appears and tells Angela that her mother may not be dead and may be a terrorist. The action and mystery amp up from there as Q and Angela find themselves being followed by Mossad agents while trying to find out the truth about Angela's mother. It's unclear in this story who can be trusted, but that just leads to greater suspense and exciting twists.
I really liked this story and will make sure to get copies of the rest of the series as well as reading other books Roland Smith has written. If I like them half as well as this one, I will be busy reading his books for some time to come. show less

I give kids' books a lot of latitude--I'll suspend my disbelief much higher than I would for an adult book and accept the deus ex machina plot device. The sharp edges of history can be sanded down a bit (like a long-time favorite, The Secret Cave) as long as they do not bend history into untruth to tell their story. While I wouldn't accuse Smith of outright changing history, I do have to vociferously object to his choice of the main premise of the story: that a parent in London during the show more Blitz would think that their son would be safer in Burma (now Myanmar). Anyone with a little knowledge of WWII in East Asia will tell you that this is absolutely ridiculous.

This painfully contrived arm-twist of a plot point allows Smith to do acceptable writerly things with his main character, Nick: use him to introduce readers to the world of a teak plantation harvested with the help of elephants, all from the eyes of an outsider. Props for that move.

Plot-wise and character-wise, there is quite a bit to like in this book. The story clips along nicely, quite a few characters are more complex than either all-bad or all-good, kids are resourceful but can't be completely independent from adults, the world-building is solid, and historical minefields like the Japanese invasion, forced labor, and the labor camp death marches are handled reasonably well for a young audience. Which makes it all the more disappointing that the book falls flat on its face in a few key areas:

1) History: I've explained that founding premise of the book is absurd, but I have one other key complaint. A Japanese character has a son being held in an American internment camp. Props to the author for dropping reference to this shocker--reading about Manzanar was absolutely hollowing for me when I first found out about it (as in, I felt hollow inside, like I'd lost something important, like my liver). But then Smith has this Japanese character receive letters from this son, which goes so far beyond credulity that I would argue it undoes the point Smith's trying to make. Assuming the kid reading this book doesn't yet know about the internment camps where the US held Japanese Americans during WWII, Smith has just implied that "inmates" were allowed to send letters--not just outside, but to the enemy. True, his son is sick. But how can we really believe that a country that allows an ailing little boy to write to his dear papa, who just happens to be a key figure in the army of the opponent, would not help said little boy? You think this is a leap, but note that this same Japanese character, for whom we've been asked to show sympathy in light of his concern about his trapped son, withholds incoming letters from his own captive. The very parallel that Smith has set up between the Japanese son & parent and Nick & parent drags other points of comparison into view, so we can't just ignore the implications of the different ways the US and the Japanese handle communications between their prisoners and the prisoners' families.

2) Racism: Everyone speaks lovely English. Fine, it's a kid's book, Myanmar was a British colony, all right--suspending my disbelief higher than usual. Then we get to this little gem:

169) "You don't look anything like you did the day we picked you up ... You look almost Burmese."

Said by Burmese Mya to Nick, a white boy who hasn't been in the country for a year. That second line, the one that brings my disbelief crashing down, isn't even necessary--there are so many other ways to say that he looks tanner, slimmer, more physically fit, more worldly, whatever it is Smith is trying to say. Instead he goes for the one that indicates that a colonizer can "go native" through his own efforts...and can even do "native" better than the locals. It's said several times throughout the book that the Burmese can't decide whether it would be better to be occupied by the British or the Japanese. It's left to Nick's father, the benevolent white man who understands the primitive peoples' culture so well that he sees what they do not and knows what's best for them, to point out the unseen alternative: "It's time to give Burma back to the Burmese" (313). Gag.

3) Sexism: Only two female characters "on screen" and only one of them a main character, but I initially had high hopes for Mya. (The fact that she isn't even mentioned in the flap copy despite being half the story should have tipped me off.) Mya is a plucky, intelligent girl who's grown up on the teak plantation and has a gift for working with elephants, sneaking in trial runs whenever possible. Consider the following promising dialogue:

Mya: "Have you ever met a mahout stronger than his elephant?"
"No."
"So strength has little to do with controlling an elephant."

Snap! Traditional society insists that she can't become a mahout, but this is a kid's book, so her brother supports her ambitions and her father lets her drive an elephant not too long into the book (what is it with Disney stories and absent mothers?). She gets to be rebellious without rocking the boat too hard, which I do admire in a society that tends to paint women who want more as having no choice but to reject everything about their current situation.

Anyway, after some friendly introductory scenes that have me hoping that Nick and Mya will be fast friends, things start to go downhill. By page 96-97, "Nick had been looking at her a little differently since Indaw [her brother] pointed out how pretty she was. She had a beautiful olive-colored complexion*; her long black hair shone in the light of the campfires, and she had a wonderful smile." (*I know this isn't literal, but I always think of green olives when I read this phrase.)(Also, note the misuse of the semicolon.) Argh! No! Step away from the innocent children! Don't already start telling girls that they can't exist without a romantic interest!

I also feel compelled to complain that it's a bit disingenuous to tiptoe around the threat of rape--which would only be inflicted on *pretty*girls* like Mya--and substitute in the relatively benign threat of marriage. If we're pretending sex doesn't exist (this is a kid's book: mild gore=okay, body bits=bad) and consent is required for marriage, it doesn't logically make sense why Mya is in danger because she's pretty, or why her erstwhile suitor would do something as alarming as try to get into her room. Frankly, this kind of "inexplicable" behavior is almost scarier than at least saying something like, "Some bad people like to hurt people. They'll hurt anyone, but sometimes they especially like to hurt people who are pretty." Instead of offering some explanation to young readers of why Mya is afraid of a man who hasn't hit her and asks her permission to marry, there's this unspoken fear that, because it is not described, could be either large or small. Maybe this is just personal, but to me, all those unspoken, undescribed horrors were almost worse than just spelling it out: it left an amorphous dread of the implied but unknown. Rape is a horror, but one that can be identified, one that I could define in relation to myself. A mixed message like the one we get through Mya, though, that was unquantifiable--so how could I know that the warning did not apply to me? How can I be sure that I won't someday be in Mya's situation, but without the knowledge that the man isn't a good man? Basically, I think this kind of euphemism ("pretty") is far more toxic than helpful, and I view myself as a case in point. /End rant--since I could probably keep going on the personal note.

Anywho, back to the main program: So yes, while I did actually like quite a bit about the characters and the story and would really like the book if I read it in a vacuum (or fifteen years ago), the crimes of historical inaccuracy and the subtle colonialism are just a bit too much for me to get past. The sexism, sadly, is so culturally ingrained that it doesn't seem fair to dock points for that. But I'm really just hung up on the history. Was there NO other way to make this story work? What if something happened to Nick's caretaker in London--killed in the Blitz for a parent, drafted for an older sibling--and this was the explanation for his move from hot zone to hot zone? Why does the Japanese solder need to receive letters from his son to be worried about the fact that he's in a US internment camp?

Quote Roundup (for those quotes not already discussed)

149) Okay, not a quote, but another circumstance that beggars belief. Nick receives a letter from his father that's been smuggled in. Seems like paper should be scarce and the message should be unobtrusive. The letter, however, waxes lyrical about the details of his journeys, his work, and the ease of hiding things like his journal from his captors.

256) There was no barbwire around the mahout camp.
Who on earth copyedited this? It's "barbed wire": -ed space. I'd let it slide in dialogue, since this is an easy slip of the tongue, but in third-person writing that's not trying to sound casual, there's no reason this should be uncorrected.

I feel a bit guilty for being so hard on this book, but I think it's because I enjoyed enough of it that I probably would have really liked it when I was younger--and I'm aware now of the silent lessons the text would be teaching me.

Tagged "physically gorgeous" because I absolutely love the cover design. I am not ashamed to say that this was a case of judging a book by its cover when I first got it. I am ashamed to say that the cover is the only thing tempting me to keep the book. show less

New step-siblings Q (short for Quest) and Angela continue to trail a ghost terrorist cell along with SOS, a team made up mostly of retired operatives from the CIA and other organizations. Angela's mother is climbing her way toward the top of the ghost cell, but the danger is getting higher all the time. Meanwhile, Boone may not be the only one with a mysterious ability, and there seems to be a mole on the SOS team or amongst their allies.

Here we have part 5 of the series-long story, the kind show more of series that you really need to start from the beginning. A lot more happened in this book than in the previous, which I'm glad for, because the previous wasn't as interesting as the earlier books in the series had been. I was concerned the second half of the series would end up being a let-down compared to the first half. I can't say that we get much in the way of answers in this book, but there were certainly some revelations. And the story really moved forward, with action comparable to what we see in the rest of the series.

One thing I've begun to notice in this book is that Q, as the main character, isn't the stereotype we might expect in a book like this—an action-loving kid who has taken to all of this adventure and danger. He's anxious and jumpy and will probably need some therapy in the future. It makes for a much more realistic story, even while there are some unrealistic things happening as well. I do wish the author had had the foresight to realize he might want to include some scenes from the POV of someone other than Q later in the series, though, and not started it in 1st person. I'm not a fan of changing between 1st and 3rd. Overall, though, I'm really interested to see how this series ends. show less