Stuck in Neutral

Author: Terry Trueman

What if you couldn’t control

• Your fingers• Your hands• Your left foot• Your stomach• Your tongue• Your throat• Your eyelids

Summary

• Shawn McDaniel is a 14 year old boy with cerebral palsy growing up in Seattle

• Continually gets called stupid• Shawn is able to remember

everything he hears with total recall• Shawn wonders what it would be

like if someone knew the real him• Afraid his dad wants to kill him to

end his suffering

Characters• Shawn McDaniel: When he was born he had brain

damage because a tiny blood vessel bursted in his head that was in the wrong spot. As a result the blood vessel wiped out his muscle control and confined him to a wheelchair.

• Linda McDaniel: Shawn’s loving and patient mother who is 45 years old. Although she has a part time job her full time job is taking care of Shawn.

• Sydney E. McDaniel: Shawn thinks his dad is a basic, slightly smarter than most human being. Sydney wrote a poem about him and his son that won him a Pulitzer Prize. Also, he films a documentary trying to figure out why we teach children who cannot learn.

Characters Continued• Cindy McDaniel: Helped teach Shawn how to

read when he was 7 years old by playing school with him. Shawn thinks Cindy is a lot like her mom, in that she is very loving and patient toward Shawn’s condition.

• Paul McDaniel: Helped save Shawn’s life when two teenagers were going to burn him by beating them up and making them leave.

• Mrs. Hare: According to Shawn she is an older teaching lady. She has little reading glass and is nice, patient, a little boring but really caring.

Characters Continued• William: A teaching assistant to Mrs. Hare.

He is fifty years old, strong, big, and not afraid of his students.

• Becky: A teaching assistant to Mrs. Hare. Becky has red hair that is long and soft.

• Earl Detraux: He is in jail because he killed his two year old son who was brain damaged. He killed his son to end his pain and agony, which he suffered from every day.

• Vonda: Shawn’s respite care provider. She is nice and sometimes impatient with Shawn’s feeding times.

Connections

• Many students parents are divorced• Most students can relate to knowing

someone with a disability whether it being a sibling, friend, or family member

Terry Trueman• Has written 7 other books• Sequel to Stuck In Neutral is Life

Happens Next• Cruise Control – From Paul’s

point of view• Has a son Henry who has

cerebral palsy and has been diagnosed as profoundly developmentally disabled

Incorporation

• I would use this text in a unit about discrimination

• Have students read the book independently• Assign a chapter each day to students• Class discussion: about what happened,

their reactions, if they think this is realistic, and predicting what is going to happen next

• Students will have their own personal journal to reflect on what their reading. They have the option of turning it in but will not be graded.

Activities

• Split class into ten groups of 3-4 students• Assign a different character to each

group• Have students use poster board to make

a scrapbook of their character• When finished groups will share their

reasoning behind the items on their poster to the class

• After posters have been graded they will be displayed throughout the classroom

Vision

• For students to have a deeper understanding of cerebral palsy

• People with disabilities aren’t stupid and are very smart in their own way.

Works Cited

Trueman, Terry. Stuck in Neutral. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000. Print.