Crown Park

Description

Jack Stewart hates his new life in Taupo. Everyone at school picks on him; his only friend is a stray cat called Chainsaw; and his parents are always away working. Then he meets Fluoro, Taupo's most visible street person. Fluoro's home is an old explosion crater in Crown Park where steam and poisonous gases still hiss and ooze from the ground. Jack soon finds that Fluoro has chosen this place because it provides a link to the last eruption of Lake Taupo, two thousand years before. With the man's help, Jack learns how to take his mind back to when moa and other ancient animals faced the world's greatest eruption since history began. Along with a group of creatures called the Luce Crew, they embark on a rescue mission that threatens not only animals in the past, but humans in the present.

Des Hunt was a science and technology teacher for many years, interspersed with periods of curriculum development both in New Zealand and overseas. During this time he had several textbooks published to support the New Zealand curriculum. In recent years he has looked at other ways of interesting youngsters in science, creating computer games and writing non-fiction and fiction with scientific themes. After living in Auckland for much of his life he moved with his wife, Lynne, to Matarangi on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula. He retired from the classroom in 2007 to concentrate on writing fiction for children. He continues his aims of fostering young peoples' natural interest in the science of their surroundings by visiting schools and libraries where he runs workshops and presentations.