Roland Smith Books in Order

This nonfiction book follows wildlife rescuers working in the aftermath of a major oil spill, documenting how sea otters are captured, cleaned, rehabilitated, and returned to the wild. Clear photos and straightforward science show the painstaking work behind saving a species in crisis.

An introduction to monkeys and apes living in modern zoos, explaining how they eat, play, and interact in their exhibits. The book also touches on conservation programs and how keepers try to meet the needs of intelligent, social animals far from their native habitats.

This early reader surveys the snakes commonly found in zoos, from tiny tree dwellers to huge constrictors. Simple text and photographs explain how keepers feed, handle, and safely display these reptiles while teaching visitors to respect rather than fear them.

Behind-the-scenes photographs invite readers into a zoo nursery, where orphaned and newborn animals receive round-the-clock care. From bottle-feeding cubs to monitoring fragile infants, the book shows how keepers give vulnerable creatures a second chance.

This volume profiles big and small wild cats—from lions and tigers to lesser-known species—as they live in zoo habitats. Readers learn about their hunting adaptations, social behavior, and the daily routines that help keepers enrich and protect them.

A look at marine mammals under human care, focusing on how aquariums house, train, and study whales, dolphins, and porpoises. The text discusses their intelligence and complex needs, and how work with captive animals can support research and rescue efforts in the wild.

Written for younger readers, this book explores the life cycle of African elephants, describing how they find food and water, care for calves, and use their trunks and tusks. It also notes the threats they face in the wild and how people are working to help.

After his mother’s death, fourteen-year-old Jacob Lansa travels alone to Kenya to find his biologist father. Joined by a Maasai elder on a quest to bring the long rains, he confronts elephant poachers, drought, and the pull between science and traditional beliefs.

Blending narrative and science, this book traces efforts to pull the red wolf back from the brink of extinction. It follows biologists as they breed wolves in captivity, release them, and monitor their survival, showing how complex and fragile a recovery program can be.

Jake joins his father in Brazil, where they’re working to create a jaguar preserve deep in the rainforest. Sabotage, explosions, and river pirates turn their scientific expedition into a fight to protect both the big cats and the people who depend on the forest.

This factual guide introduces the often-misunderstood vulture, explaining how its sharp eyesight, strong stomach, and soaring flight help clean up the environment. Photographs and accessible text highlight different species and the dangers they face from habitat loss and poisoning.

Set in an Asian forest camp, this book follows working elephants and the people who care for them. Readers see how mahouts train, feed, and bathe the animals, and how logging and tourism have changed the elephants’ lives.

Dylan Hickock’s father joins a secretive expedition to prove Bigfoot is real on the slopes of Mount St. Helens. When Dylan tags along with an eccentric biologist, he is caught between hunters, government agents, an awakening volcano, and a creature that may not be a myth.

Told through the eyes of Seaman, Meriwether Lewis’s Newfoundland, this novel follows the Lewis and Clark expedition from the dog’s first days with the Corps of Discovery. Through storms, starvation, and new peoples, Seaman watches his captain wrestle with leadership, doubt, and destiny.

Jacob travels with his grandfather back to the Hopi reservation where he was born and hears rumors of a lone Mexican wolf haunting the mesas. Caught between ranchers and protectors, he risks everything to keep the last lobo alive and free.

After masked men ransack his home and his father is arrested for drug trafficking, Jack Osborne enters the Witness Security Program and becomes Zach Granger. Starting over in a Nevada town, he struggles with constant lies, new friendships, and the fear that the cartel will find them.

An alphabet tour of Oregon, pairing rhyming text with short facts about landmarks, wildlife, and history. From Hells Canyon to the Pacific coast, the book offers a kid-friendly look at the Beaver State’s landscapes and culture.

When their scientist parents vanish in a helicopter crash, thirteen-year-old twins Grace and Marty O’Hara are sent to live with a secretive uncle who hunts legendary creatures. A disastrous flight drops them into the Congolese jungle, where poachers, wild terrain, and a rumored dinosaur force them to grow up fast.

This alphabet book celebrates Washington State, from Mount Rainier and rain forests to famous residents and Seattle’s skyline. Each letter’s rhyme is expanded with sidebars that share extra facts for curious readers.

Just when Zach and his family think they’re safe, his sister lands a spot on a national talent show and accidentally exposes their new location. Kidnapped by the cartel and taken to a remote compound, Zach must outwit ruthless criminals to save his family and their second chance.

Using the alphabet as a guide, this picture book explores Washington, DC—its monuments, museums, neighborhoods, and people. Short poems and longer notes highlight everything from cherry blossoms to the National Zoo.

Through an A-to-Z format, this book follows hardworking zookeepers as they feed, clean, train, and care for animals behind the scenes. Light verses and factual notes reveal how much invisible effort goes into a safe, modern zoo.

During the Blitz, fourteen-year-old Nick Freestone is sent from London to his father’s teak plantation in Burma, hoping to escape war. Japanese forces soon invade, and a daring escape on elephant-back becomes his only hope of rescuing his captured father and friends.

Fourteen-year-old Peak Marcello is arrested for scaling New York skyscrapers and given a choice: juvenile detention or joining his estranged father’s Everest expedition. As storms, thin air, and family tensions mount, he must decide what summiting the world’s highest peak is really worth.

Thirteen-year-old magician-in-training Q joins his new stepsister Angela on a yearlong road trip with their parents’ rock band. When strange coincidences pile up on the way to Philadelphia, they uncover secret agents, shadowy followers, and a threat tied to Independence Hall itself.

An ocean-themed alphabet that ranges from tides and currents to whales, coral reefs, and legendary sea monsters. Each letter offers a simple rhyme plus extra science, inviting kids to dive deeper into how the sea works.

Pat O’Toole idolizes his older brother, Coop, who is obsessed with tunnels and underground spaces—until Coop runs away after a family blowup. A year later, Pat follows a trail of recorded messages to New York City and discovers a hidden community living beneath the streets.

Grace and Marty board the research ship Coelacanth with Uncle Wolfe, bound for New Zealand to capture evidence of a giant squid. Sabotage, stowaways, and a rival collector’s spies make the voyage a claustrophobic battle to protect cryptids—and themselves.

Fresh from their first brush with espionage, Q and Angela follow the tour to Washington, DC, and straight into the White House. While searching for the truth about Angela’s mother, they must navigate rival agencies, encrypted messages, and a conspiracy that reaches into the Oval Office.

An alphabet tour of the Smithsonian museums, showcasing famous artifacts, animals, artworks, and discoveries. Readers get a sense of how enormous the collection is and how many different stories of American history and science it holds.

Thirteen-year-old Chase Masters travels the country with his dad, a contractor who races toward natural disasters instead of away from them. When a monster hurricane slams into Florida, Chase is stranded with new friends and must use every survival skill he’s been taught.

High-school athlete Briggs Barclay wants nothing more than to impress the football coach, until he befriends Theodore, a sharp-witted neighbor who uses a wheelchair. When Theodore draws him into a risky scheme, Briggs discovers courage—and trouble—far beyond the playing field.

Picking up right after the hurricane, Chase, Nicole, and Rashawn shelter at Nicole’s family farm, winter home to a traveling circus. Rising floodwaters, escaped big cats, and failing power turn the refuge into a maze of new dangers they’ll have to outrun.

Chase and his friends head to Mexico with the Rossi Brothers Circus, searching for missing relatives after a devastating earthquake. As a nearby volcano threatens to erupt, collapsing roads, wild animals, and shifting alliances test how far they’ll go to keep each other safe.

Airline engineer Jack Traner loses everything when his company blames him for deadly mistakes he tried to prevent. Consumed by grief and anger, he uses his insider knowledge to plan a high-risk hijacking over Arizona’s Weaver’s Needle and must decide how far revenge should go.

Q and Angela head to North Carolina’s Outer Banks for the next tour stop, expecting surf and history at Kitty Hawk. Instead they’re swept into a chase through storms and sand dunes as a terrorist cell tests a new plot against their family.

In this 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers installment, siblings Amy and Dan Cahill are forced by a shadowy enemy to steal the Golden Jubilee diamond in Berlin. With relatives held hostage and Interpol on their trail, the heist leads to a deadly new clue and a race to Timbuktu.

Still separated from Grace, Marty teams up with Uncle Wolfe to infiltrate Noah Blackwood’s high-security wildlife park and search for her. Rumors of a lethal chupacabra stalking the facility turn their rescue mission into a frantic hunt for a manufactured monster.

Following clues from Kitty Hawk, Q and Angela arrive in San Antonio with their parents’ rock band and another Ghost Cell attack looming. Between rehearsals at the Alamo and shadowy meetings with Boone, they must decode conflicting intel before the terrorists strike again.

After surviving a plot in Texas, Q and Angela travel to Chicago, where schoolwork competes with spy work on their parents’ concert tour. A suspected mole inside SOS, a chemical-weapon scheme, and a looming attack over the city push their growing skills to the limit.

As the Match tour reaches San Francisco, Q and Angela are supposed to be headed for the safety of boarding school. Instead they slip away with Boone and SOS, racing across the city and the former prison of Alcatraz to unmask the Ghost Cell’s elusive leader.

Marty, Grace, and their friend Luther head to the Brazilian rainforest to search for Marty’s missing parents and the rare creatures they study. On Cryptos Island and deep in the jungle, they confront Noah Blackwood’s twisted experiments and a menagerie of dangerous hybrids.

This concept alphabet explains how humans have measured time, from sundials and calendars to atomic clocks and time zones. Brief verses and clear explanations introduce inventors, landmarks, and ideas that help us keep track of days, years, and everything in between.

Years after Everest, Peak joins an International Peace Ascent in the Hindu Kush, meant to showcase teen climbers from around the world. When kidnappers strike at base camp and his mother is taken, the climb becomes a rescue mission through war-torn mountains.

After escaping an underground cult in New York, Pat, Coop, and Kate are on the run across the snowy Northwest. Hunted by Kate’s grandfather and his followers, they must expose his next plan while figuring out who, if anyone, they can trust above ground.

Peak travels to Myanmar to visit a friend and is invited to attempt Hkakabo Razi, one of the world’s most remote peaks. A grueling trek through jungle and political unrest makes him question how far he’ll push himself and his team to reach the summit.

After an avalanche on Hkakabo Razi, Peak and his team are forced to descend into Tibet, where his father Josh and mentor Zopa are wanted fugitives. Dodging authorities and an old enemy, he faces a final test of loyalty, courage, and endurance.

On Henry Ludd’s thirteenth birthday, the power grid fails and the world goes permanently dark. Months later, his family’s wind-powered farm is a rare oasis, until Henry ventures out to find his missing father and discovers how dangerous the new lawless landscape has become.

Siblings Ring and Asia Wilde join their scientist parents in Brazil, where a research trip on golden lion tamarins turns deadly after their mother disappears. Navigating the Amazon’s rivers, rainforest, and human threats, they use their field skills to track kidnappers and protect endangered wildlife.

Back home at their family’s wildlife park in Texas, Ring and Asia expect a break from danger. Instead they face angry protesters, mysterious break-ins, and a plot to sabotage the facility after rescued vaquitas are moved there, forcing the siblings to uncover who wants the park destroyed.

Ring and Asia travel to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, where one of the world’s rarest porpoises is on the brink of extinction. As they join scientists trying to save the vaquita, they uncover poachers, conspiracies, and a race against time on the open water.