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SWALLOWING THE SUN Life was calm in Jose's sleepy Honduran village of LaRupa -- until the monster struck and the earth swallowed almost everything that mattered. Courage is the only thing of value left -- the only thing that might help a boy save the survivors. "There's never been anything like this rain before. I hear the monster growling, low and mean. Its voice is the wind roaring all around us. This water isn't like rain at all -- there aren't raindrops but sheets of solid water, like a waterfall crashing down from the sky..." Yesterday, Jose thought about music, girls, sports, his favourite ice-cream; he watched the wild parrots fly across his home; he dreamed of traveling the world. But when the hurricane hits his little town, it seems to swallow the sun. The world shrinks to life or death against that monstrous power, and Jose must find the strength to help his fellow survivors pull through and live on... |
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| REVIEW
EXCERPTS: "The narrative moves along at a fast pace and is an undemanding but exciting read. As well as the adventure and the rite of passage themes, the book also raises awareness of a forgotten disaster in a little-known part of the world." ~ Michael Lockwood, The School Librarian August 2004 "Terry Trueman’s much promoted and
talked about previous novel, Stuck in Neutral, is a difficult act
to follow, and Swallowing the Sun is quite different, but still
with vivid, driving present-tense first-person narration." "A powerful story in the convincing voice of a young teenager,
it tells of the strength of children forced to take on the burdens
of an adult world in times of natural disaster and war" "Nowhere has the loss of innocence been more sensitively detailed
in a novel that still manages to offer hope. Trueman is a writer
of great scope who produces original and uncompromising fiction." |
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...a few words from
Terry Trueman about the book: |
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In addition to my work on BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN DIFFERENTLY!, and my other collaborations with Michael Gurian, I am also the author of STUCK IN NEUTRAL (HarperCollins 2000) a novel for young adults which won numerous awards, including a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award, and ALA Best Books For Teens, An ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, Amazon.com Editors Choice Top Ten books for Teens 2000, An ALA Booklist Book for Youth Editors choice, An ALA Top 10 Youth First Novels, Parents Guide to Children's Media Outstanding Achievement in Fiction, New York Public Library Best Books for teens, and others. STUCK IN NEUTRAL has also been optioned for a feature film by Craig T. Nelson's Family Tree Productions in Los Angeles, CA. I am also the author of the book SHEEHAN (Rednblack Press 1995), a long narrative poem with an afterword by Michael Gurian. |
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I have known Michael Gurian
for nearly twenty years and have had the pleasure, as both good friend
and colleague, of discussing, researching, debating and sometimes
even arguing with him about his work and theories. Finally, a few
years ago, Michael and I decided to collaborate on three projects,
a screenplay of an unfinished novel he had written (this is still
a work-in-progress), and two nonfiction books. The first of these books was a variation on Michael's |
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| already enormous body of work
on male development, WHAT STORIES DOES MY SON NEED? (Putnam 2000).
This collection of reviews of films and books particularly well-suited
for boys at different developmental stages and ages, was well suited
to my own expertise in developmental psychology (I received my Master
of Science Degree in Developmental Psychology from Eastern Washington
University in 1975) and my interests in film, books and popular culture. Michael's and my third collaboration was our authorship, along with Dr. Patricia Henley, of BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN DIFFERENTLY! (John Wiley Publishers, 2001). Although my original involvement in this project was as a writer, I eventually ended as lead researcher. In this capacity, I first used the materials Michael recommended to me to begin to investigate our hypothesis that there are significant and important differences in some of the ways boys and girls learn. After exhausting the major texts in this field, I turned my energies to finding hundreds of additional scholarly, popular, news and other reference resources related to the our thesis. What our research proved was that our theories were correct: Boy and girls DO, in an enormous range of learning tasks, utilize very different cognitive and neurological approaches in their learning paradigms. My in-depth involvement in this project added enormously to my understanding of Michael Gurian's theories and work in the fields of male development and gender differences--This expertise allows me to offer workshops and presentations about the materials covered in this groundbreaking study, as well as sharing the story of our research process, theories and conclusions. |
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