The Himalayas (Great Mountain Ranges of the World)

The Himalayas are called the roof of the world. The tallest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest, at 29,28 feet, is ones of 14 peaks in the Himalayan chain. The Himalayas stretch 1,55 miles from China to Afghanistan. More than 4 million people live in the Himalayan regions. Among them are sherpas, people of Nepal, who help to guide climbers up Mount Everest. A chapter discusses the record-setting climb of Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay. Students will also read that it is a Hindu belief that these mountains are the “abode of gods.

Charles W. Maynard is an ordained United Methodist minister who works with the Camp and Retreat Ministry of the Holston Conference in east Tennessee and in southwestern Virginia. He has an undergraduate degree from Emory and Henry College and a master of divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. The first executive director of Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Charles has written 20 children's books as well as national park guidebooks, including Time Well Spent, a family hiking guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that he wrote with Hal Hubbs and David Morris. He and his wife, Janice, have two daughters, Caroline and Anna, and two granddaughters, Anastasia and Ainsley.