Roland Smith
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40 free Roland Smith trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Roland Smith spent more than twenty years looking after zoo animals before he became one of America's busiest authors of adventure stories for young readers. That first career shows on every page: his heroes track rare creatures, dodge poachers and survive storms, and the animal details ring true because he lived them. This quiz gathers fun facts about the man and his work. It covers his childhood and his zoo years, the nonfiction that launched him, and the novels readers meet in school, including Peak, Cryptid Hunters, Elephant Run, Sasquatch, Zach's Lie, the I,Q thrillers and Storm Runners. It suits students preparing an author report, teachers and librarians planning a class read, and anyone who grew up on his stories. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than the plot.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Roland Smith's novel Peak, teenager Peak Marcello tries to become the youngest person to summit which mountain?
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the goal because Peak's father, a famous climber, wants the publicity of guiding the youngest summiter ever. The trip begins as Peak's way out of juvenile detention.
Q 02In Roland Smith's Sasquatch, a retired biologist admits to being which real man who vanished over the Pacific Northwest?
D. B. Cooper
D. B. Cooper is the old man's secret identity, and he says he hijacked the airliner to pay for his son's cancer treatment. The real hijacker parachuted away with $200,000 in 1971 and was never identified.
Q 03Roland Smith's The Captain's Dog retells which American explorers' journey through the eyes of a dog named Seaman?
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark crossed the continent with Seaman, a dog Meriwether Lewis bought for $20, half a month of an Army captain's pay. He was the only animal to complete the whole trip.
Q 04Roland Smith's first book grew out of his work rescuing which animals after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska?
Sea otters
Sea otters soaked in crude oil were the patients, and Sea Otter Rescue became his first book. The tanker had struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound.
Q 05Roland Smith notes that he shares a November 30 birthday with which favorite American author of his?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, exactly 116 years before Smith, who counts him among his favorite authors. Smith even records the minute of his own birth: 11:16 in the morning.
Q 06Roland Smith's third Cryptid Hunters novel is named after which legendary creature blamed for attacks on livestock?
Chupacabra
Chupacabra continues the story begun in Tentacles, as Marty and his uncle search for kidnapped Grace while sightings of the creature are reported. Its Spanish name means goat-sucker.
Q 07At age five, Roland Smith received which heavy gift from his parents that became his favorite possession?
A manual typewriter
A manual typewriter that he says weighed more than he did kept him busy for hours, though he could not yet spell.
Q 08In Roland Smith's novel Tentacles, an expedition sails to New Zealand hoping to capture which deep-sea animal alive?
A giant squid
A giant squid is the prize, and the crew lures a live one to the ship with a submarine designed by the inventor Ted Bronson. A stowaway henchman spends the voyage working against them.
Q 09A Roland Smith novel won an animal-compassion award named after two characters from which children's classic?
Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web gave the Charlotte and Wilbur Award its name, with the blessing of E. B. White's estate. Smith won it for a Wildes adventure about saving an endangered sea mammal.
Q 10In Roland Smith's Cryptid Hunters series, eggs of the legendary Mokélé-mbembé hatch into which long-extinct animals?
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs are what the family ends up raising in secret, because Mokélé-mbembé is a water-dwelling creature of African legend often imagined as a surviving sauropod. A rival later steals both hatchlings.
Q 11Roland Smith was born in which Oregon city, where a part-time job at the local zoo began his animal career?
Portland
Portland is home to the Oregon Zoo, where Smith spent a decade as a keeper after impressing the foreman by catching an escaped bird bare-handed.
Q 12As a zoo biologist, Roland Smith helped reintroduce which endangered American predator, later the subject of his book?
Red wolves
Red wolves were bred in captivity and released back into the wild, and Smith coordinated that program for years. His Journey of the Red Wolf won an Oregon Book Award in 1996.
Q 13Roland Smith co-wrote alphabet picture books such as B is for Beaver and W is for Waves with which family member?
His wife
Q 21Seaman, the canine narrator of Roland Smith's The Captain's Dog, belongs to which large, water-loving breed?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland dogs are strong swimmers that do well on boats, which made one a sensible choice for a long river journey. In the novel Seaman starts out as a pup chasing rats along the Ohio River.
Q 22The first book in Roland Smith's I,Q spy series is named after which Philadelphia landmark?
Independence Hall
Independence Hall anchors the opening adventure of Q and Angela, whose musician parents are touring the country by luxury coach. Later books in the series move on to the White House and the Alamo.
Q 23In Roland Smith's Storm Runners, Chase Masters and his storm-chasing father are caught in which natural disaster?
His wife, Marie Smith, is an author herself, and the pair have written a shelf of alphabet books together. Their subjects run from a zookeeper's working day to the Smithsonian Institution.
Q 14E is for Evergreen, an alphabet picture book co-written by Roland Smith, celebrates which US state by its nickname?
Washington
Washington is nicknamed the Evergreen State, and the book followed an Oregon alphabet, B is for Beaver. Smith knew the state well, having spent twelve years working at a zoo there.
Q 15Roland Smith was studying which subject at university, hoping to become a writer, when he took a part-time zoo job?
English
English was his major at his hometown university, and the zoo job was only meant to pay the bills. He stayed in animal work for more than twenty years before writing full-time.
Q 16At his first zoo job, Roland Smith astonished his boss by recapturing two escaped South American rodents of which kind?
Agoutis
Agoutis had vanished into the park around the zoo, and his boss sent him after them as a joke, sure they were gone for good. He came back with both.
Q 17In Roland Smith's Peak, the teenage hero is arrested after scaling which neo-Gothic New York skyscraper?
Woolworth Building
The Woolworth Building climb lands Peak in jail and in the news, which is why he is sent abroad with his long-absent father. The tower was the tallest in the world when it opened in 1913.
Q 18In Roland Smith's Peak, Peak Marcello's long-lost father Josh Wood runs a climbing company based in which Asian country?
Thailand
Thailand is where Josh Wood has set up his business, and going to live with him there is Peak's alternative to juvenile detention. The offer turns out to have big strings attached.
Q 19Roland Smith's Sasquatch follows a Bigfoot hunt on which volcano in the American West as it threatens to erupt?
Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens rumbles through the story while Dylan shadows a team that wants to shoot a Sasquatch, a plan his father hopes to stop. The real volcano erupted catastrophically in 1980.
Q 20Roland Smith's Elephant Run sends a London boy to his father's plantation in which country just before Japan invades?
Burma
Burma looked safer than London under the bombs of 1941, so Nick Freestone's mother shipped him there. Japanese troops soon seized the plantation and sent his father to a prison camp.
A hurricane
A hurricane named Emily, billed as the storm of the century, strikes in the first book of the trilogy. The sequels follow it with rising flood waters and then a volcano.
Q 24In Roland Smith's Thunder Cave, Jacob Lansa crosses which African country looking for his biologist father?
Kenya
Kenya is in the grip of a drought when Jacob arrives, and he teams up with Supeet, a Masai who hopes to bring the rains. Together they also face elephant poachers armed with guns.
Q 25In Roland Smith's Cryptid Hunters, Grace and Marty O'Hara fall from a plane into which African river basin?
Congo
The Congo is where their uncle stayed on an earlier expedition, and the pair shelter in his old base, the Skyhouse. They land with a tiny dog called PD, short for Pocket Dog.
Q 26Roland Smith's nonfiction book They Are Here! profiles thirty plants and animals to explain which environmental problem?
Invasive species
Invasive species in the book include brown rats, which reached America on a ship from England, and the pet pythons now thriving in Florida's Everglades. It also suggests ways to protect local ecosystems.
Q 27In Roland Smith's Peak, which young Sherpa climber does Peak Marcello allow to reach the summit ahead of him?
Sun-Jo
Sun-Jo is the son of a Sherpa who died on a climb, and standing on top first will bring money his family badly needs. Peak gives up a record and the fame that goes with it.
Q 28In Roland Smith's Zach's Lie, a family entering witness protection is moved to the remote town of Elko in which state?
Nevada
Nevada hides the Osbornes after the father is arrested for drug trafficking and agrees to testify against his old boss. Elko's large Basque community becomes part of the story.
Q 29In Roland Smith's I,Q series, the thirteen-year-old narrator known as Q has which unusual full first name?
Quest
Quest grew up on a sailboat in Sausalito, California, with his singer mother. Her marriage to a songwriter put him on a tour bus with a new stepsister, Angela.
Q 30In Roland Smith's Elephant Run, the Freestone plantation, worked by timber elephants, produces which tropical hardwood?
Teak
Teak made the Freestones' fortune, and the plantation's working elephants include Hannibal, a bull with a dangerous temper. Smith had already written a nonfiction book about such timber elephants.