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Last updated: 23 March 2010

The Stuck There Forever Boat

Illustrated by Bruce Potter

Tama lives on a beautiful Pacific Island. He and his nanny spend time gathering seafood from  the coral reef that fringes their island. But Tama and the villagers are facing a one major problem climate change where global warming is slowly sinking his island. When the villages have to be evacuated, Tama's nanny refuses to leave. She was born on the island the same night a storm shipwrecked the Stuck There Forever Boat  there and will only leave when the boat leaves too.

Will Tama be able to do to resolve this situation and convince his nanny to leave with them?

This is a story about the relationship between a boy and his grandmother, facing the dramatic effects of global warming.

Paperback, 32 pages

Recommended Price: NZ$ 17.99

ISBN Number: 9780143502692

The story behind the story

We used to drive past a rotting wreck of a boat parked on the roadside. One day, my son Matthew remarked, “I wonder if that stuck there forever boat is still there?” It was. And the phrase stuck in my head. I thought it was the prefect way to describe a shipwreck in a story.

A few months later, I heard a radio interview that described the problems with salt water seeping into the soils of the Pacific island of Tuvalu. The global climate crisis was tearing apart the lives of the people some 50 years earlier than predicted. These people will be forced to move from their country.  I was horrified to hear this and wondered if i could write a story about global warming. Meanwhile the shipwreck idea was still drifting around my brain.

The combination of the two ideas resulted in the book you see before you.