The Sugar Glider

THE SUGAR GLIDER What’s the relationship between Don and Sylvia like? How does it change from the beginning to the end of this story? What do you think it will be like in the future?

First Don and his ex-wife Sylvia support a cold and distant relation due to the time they have been separated.

After the accident, Don repents of the mistake that he has made moving away from his family due to his work, and he confesses to his daughter Judy the love he feels for her and her mother Sylvia. On the other side, Sylvia feels that Patrick is not the love of her life and after the final family reunion, she offers Don a second opportunity to be together.

In my opinion, Don, Sylvia and July will be a family again, as they were in the past.

Which character have you liked the least? Give reason for your answer including a description of the character.

The character I dislike more in the book is Patrick Forsha because he appears to be a rich business man who tries to form a family with Sylvia and Judy, but in reality he is guilty of exploiting Warrangi mines, and getting the uranium to sell it with malicious intent, and also of trying to kill Sylvia’s ex husband .

Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story. Why? Judy, Don Radcliffe’s daughter, is involved in a plane accident caused by someone at Warrangi mines. Firstly, her father has to console her on the crash and the death of his pilot and friend, Paul. A little time later, Judy loses her fears and begins to think as a survivor, helping his father to organize, lighting a fire to protect them in the night and using her knowledge to fishing and also handle a pair of brumbies. Later, when her father hurts his leg, she demonstrates she is a heroine, travelling alone in search of help, and finally saving her father, thanks to John and Joe, without showing fear before her attackers.

2.- At the beginning of the story, the relationship between Don and Sylvia was cold and distant. She was angry and hurt because Don´s job was the most important thing for him, so much that he abandoned his wife and his daughter for a year. After that, he regretted his dreadful behaviour.

During this year, Sylvia met her new boyfriend Patrick, an important businessman, and when Don returned to Brisbane, she was a bit embarrassed as a result of the meeting between Don and Patrick.

Throughout the story, Don and Sylvia realized that they still loved each other, because he missed her and she worried about him. At the end, they decided to give each other a second opportunity, so I think that in the future they won´t make the same mistakes, so they will be very happy.

3.- My favourite character in this story has been Don´s daughter, Judy, because she was a very brave girl and she saved her father. She was fourteen years old and she was very excited because Don had promised to take her for trips in his new plane. When Don saw Judy, she was taller than he remembered her, but she still had her long dark wavy hair, tied back, and the same pretty face as her mother Sylvia. Judy looked brown and well from her outdoor life in the country. She was brave, intelligent, and responsible and she looked very mature for her age.

5.- Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story because, first of all, she wanted to go with her father and Don´s friend, Paul, on the trip to Melbourne by plane. Then they had an accident and she had to put up with Paul´s death. Don and Judy spent the night in the middle of a forest. The next day they walked to find help, but Don was injured so Judy had to continue alone. She travelled riding a horse towards the nearest village. There their enemies kidnapped and blackmailed her, but in the end she managed to save her father.

What’s the relationship between Don and Sylvia like? How does it change from the beginning to the end of this story? What do you think it will be like in the future?

At the beginning of the book, Don and her wife Sylvia feel like strange persons. They love each other, but the year Don spent out of home, made Sylvia find a new life.

At the end, and without the character of Forsha, they felt the old love that made them get married.

In my opinion, in the future, they will live together some time above all for their daughter, but the year that they lived separated would made them divorced .

Who has been your favourite character in this story? Give reason for your answer, including a description of that character.

My favorite character is Judy. She is very young, but in the most important moments, she shows big determination, strong faith and a very good heart. Her adventurous spirit and the love that she feels for her father, makes her go on and on to help her father.

Write a different ending to the story.

When Forsha showed them his FBI credentials, nobody could believe that he would be the infiltrator.

All the operation was right, but the final complications made it very risk. ‘At the end everything was good, and that`s the most important’ said Forsha.

He apologized to Sylvia and Judy for not telling them all the truth, but he was not allowed to do it.

The operation lasted for four years, and the government could not run the risk of losing all their job.

Sylvia understood his situation, and they lived together for about five years, but the continuous secret operations made them become strange people.

On the other hand, Judy ended her studies, and helped her father in the Don´s flight school. They were very good friends for the rest of their lives.

Don and Sylvia were married and they had a daughter, called Judy. Don was very busy with his job (he was a pilot) and their relationship was badly damaged. They decided to split up and Don left Australia to continue his job.

A year later, his friend Paul proposed him to build a pilot school (he wanted Don and Sylvia’s relationship to be better. He went to Australia again and he would like to be happy with Sylvia again, but now she had a boyfriend called Forsha, who was a very rich person.

Finally, Sylvia's boyfriend died so Don and Sylvia could get married.

My favourite character is Judy, Don's daughter. I like her because she is very clever.

She seems like an adult woman. She is very interested in Australia's history, and sometimes she talks to Don and Paul about some topics, like Warrangi's history and other things. She has her own opinion about some important and serious topics, like the exploitation of Warrangi mines.

She is very brave too, for example, she can ride a horse and she can look for help alone.

In fact, she isn't the main character, but she is the most important character in the story.

At the end, the police take Sylvia's boyfriend to prison because he is a drug dealer too.

Don discovers a drink in one of his new flying schools which can make dead people live again, and he gives it to Paul.

They are very good friends again and they buy a big horse to Don's daughter with the flying school money, and they help the police to close Warrangi's mine, so Judy is very happy.

Finally, Don and Sylvia have another baby, called Paul, like Don's friend. Three years later, Paul dies again, but at this time, Don's potion doesn't work.

1)

Paul and Don were good friends, and they had flown together on different trips and on a lot of planes. Besides, Paul had the dream of creating a flying school with Don because they had a good relationship.

Both characters in the book are very different. Don is more sensible than Paul. I think that Don has better ideas than Paul. I also believe that Don is too clever because he has knowledge of surviving in a difficult situation.

On the other hand, Paul is more adventurous than Don, because he wants to do a difficult trip which has a lot of risks. He is also helpful; he tries to help to Don in his new life creating a flying school.

3)

Don was my favourite character. I think that he is a good person and he tries to do everything better for his family and friends. In the story, he is always looking after his daughter and he is also worried about his friend and ex-wife. Furthermore, during the book when there are problems he is always sure of himself when they have to decide about something.

5)

She is a brave girl because she isn’t afraid to fly, and after the accident, she is calm and she has skills to survive when they are lost in the forest, for example when she helps to her father to look for resources in the plane to survive or also when she is able to tame to the wild horses to travel much more quickly. She also demonstrates it when her father breaks his leg and she is able to control the situation and she tries to look for help.

In my opinion, during the story she proves to be a very brave girl because she is resolving all the problems that she finds until the end of the book.

THE SUGAR GLIDER

1.- Write about Paul and Don´s relationship focusing on the similarities and differences between both characters.

Paul was Don´s teacher when he was young. Since then they have been really close friends and Don has always been like a son to him, so this is the reason why Paul wants to start a flying school with Don when he gets retired, and to see him happy with his wife and his daughter again.

3.- Who has been your favourite character in this story? Give reason for your answer, including a description of the charcter.

My favourite character in this story has been Joe, because he is a good boy who only tries to do good things.

Joe, who is a brown-skinned Murri boy of about eighteen, helps Judy to find her father even though he only knows her from a previous meeting at Warrangi Mine. Besides, he doesn´t want anybody to destroy the Murri lands because they are part of the history of the people.

5.-Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story. Why? Because after the accident with the aeroplane she always tried to help her father to get to a safe place. She caught and handled the horses, then after her father´s accident she went alone to find someone who could help them, and even when she was a prisoner she tried to deceive the bad guys when they wanted to find the plane and her father to kill him.

Apparently The Sugar Glider is the story of a flight of no return; however it is the story of how a man recovers his family.

There had been many problems between Don and Silvia in the past, and at that point there was a huge gap between them.

At the beginning, Don wanted to recover Silvia, but he didn´t know how because she had a new boyfriend, Patrick. Don wanted to gain her trust again but he didn´t want to do the same wrong things.

As the story goes on problems arrive, but at the end the relationship between them strengthens. Finally they forget old problems and they realise that they want to be together as a real family.

Don is my favourite character in the story.

He made mistakes in the past, but afterwards he realised that family was the most important thing and he could feel it despite the distance. Perhaps Don wasn’t a brave person, but he decided to return home. However, he was afraid because he didn´t know what it was going to happen when he came back.

Don demonstrated he was friendly with Paul because he helped him and he showed he was a sensible person because he decided to return despite his mistakes. In his relationship with Judy, he was very sensitive and insecure due to the fact that she was disappointed with him.

From my point of view, Don is an honest and loyal person who wanted to take care of his friends and family.

Another important character is Judy. Despite the fact the trip was a danger, Don had no choice and he couldn´t leave his daughter out of his new adventure. There were a lot of incidents during the story. The plane crashed and Paul died.

She proved her bravery because she found wild horses and she managed to handle them. Later her father was injured and Judy had to continue alone looking for help and she had to ride a whole day. She was the prisoner of people who wanted to kill her but finally she ran away and she even rescued her father.

THE SUGAR GLIDER Group 1 2. Don and Sylvia are divorced, but since the beginning of the story, both are in love, because when Don came back to Australia he hoped he could see Sylvia and he hoped that she would feel the same.

He was sorry things had got so bad between them. He had been away from home a lot, and Sylvia had never liked it. She had always complained that his love of flying came before his family.

When he saw Sylvia in the airport his heart beat very fast and she felt nervous.

In the future Don and Sylvia will be together again because Sylvia offers him to live in the farm with her and Judy.

Group 2 3. My favourite character in this story is Judy because she proves that she is a very brave girl.

She can break in a wild horse, and she can cross the wood alone to get help to save her father.

I think Judy is a mature person because she can be self-sufficient for her early age.

She seems a sensible girl because she has common sense and is practical. She seems a sociable and charming girl because she is friendly and enjoys being with other people.

Group 3 6. Mr Forsha was the boss of the operation but he needed to confirm all his decisions with another person. This person was a woman and he only talked to that person on the telephone, he never saw her.

When Mr Forsha arrived at the site of the plane accident he took the uranium and carried it to the agreed place. Mr Forsha took Don as a hostage.

When they arrived they saw a woman in a car. This person was very close to Don. She went out of the car. Sylvia wasn't the person that Don had thought. She was carrying a gun and she told Mr Forsha: "What is he doing here? Now you must kill him."

Suddenly Judy appeared and said to her mother: "I've got a gun and if you don't leave my father I'll shoot you."

Immediately the police appeared and arrested Sylvia and Mr Forsha.

Group1: Question2 I think that Don and Sylvia had a very good relationship in the past. Although when the story begins they are divorced, I think that they still love each other despite of their difficulties in the past.

At the beginning of the story Don knows that he is still in love with Sylvia and he hopes that she forgives him and would like to return to their home. He accepts the job (flying in the Sugar Glider) to earn money to be able to live near his daughter Judy and win Sylvia’s love again. However, Sylvia has a love relationship with Patrick Forsha, a rich businessman, but when she meets Don at the airfield she has doubts about her feelings.

When Sylvia knows that Don has taken Judy with him in the Sugar Glider she hates Don for a short time because she thinks that the most important thing for him is flying. And she remembers that that was the reason for their arguments when they were married and she also thinks Don never changes.

But at the end of the story, when they discover the kind of person Patrick is, she wants Don to return to live with them again.

I think they would be happy in the future if Don leaves his job as a pilot and he begins to live on the earth more than in the air.

Group2: Question1

My favourite character in this story has been Judy. She is a very kind girl and she is very brave and funny too.

Judy proves to be very brave although she is shocked for a moment when they have the accident and Paul dies. But after that she gets to ride a brumby and she gets to rescue her father alive looking for someone to help them.

Besides, she is intuitive because she has never liked Patrick despite the fact that he has always been kind with her.

Group3: Question 2

A different ending to the story would be: Judy doesn`t get help on time and her father is kidnapped by Patrick and his men, and those men try to get a lot of money from the Australian Government to liberate him.

But finally the police catch all of them except Patrick. He gets to arrive in Argentina and begins to live there.

THE SUGAR GLIDER 1. What’s the relationship between Don and Sylvia like? How does it change from the beginning to the end of this story? What do you think it will be like in the future?

Don went to the Pacific Islands for one year after an unhappy divorce and left his family in Brisbane. Now he would like to go back and to recover at least his daughter.

Don got divorced fromSylvia because his job of pilot took up all his time. For him flying was always more important than family and he was never at home but their daughter continued joining them. After one year of separation, the meeting was inevitable and they realized that they still fell something for each other.

The events that took place along the book, for example, the trip and the disappearance of Paul, Don and Judy, the business of the new boyfriend of Sylvia, etc led to join them again. Sylvia and Don gave to themselves a new opportunity.

I think in the future Don and Sylvia will have a calm relationship but each one have to do their share/part/bit not to hurt each other.

2. Who has been your favourite character in this story? Give reason for your answer, including a description of that character.

My favourite character is Judy, Don’s daughter. Judy is taller than her father remembered and she has long dark wavy hair, tied back and a pretty face. She looks like her mother and she is brown from her life in the farm.

She looks sociable, friendly, independent and brave.

I like Judy because I think she is a very mature person for her age. I think this personality is due to all the things that she has suffered with the divorce of her parents and with her stepfather. I also think Judy is very brave because she had a lot of courage to do all things that she did during the accident.

3. Write a different ending to the story.

Judy and the others two men (Petersen and Petersen’s pilot) are in the place where the Sugar Glider crashed.

Judy thinks her father has died. Petersen calls his boss to tell him that they have found the uranium.

One helicopter appears with Patrick Forsha and Sylvia. Patrick is the boss and Sylvia knows about all the dirty business of her boyfriend!!!!!!!!! (Sylvia doesn’t like Don because she thinks he is a bad father) Patrick and Sylvia grabbed to Judy and they pulled her into the helicopter. There Judy struggles with Patrick and Sylvia and she manages to escape before the helicopter takes off.

Two planes have suddenly appeared over the top of the hill. They belonged to the Australian air force. The rescuers take Judy, Don and Joe to the hospital and they arrest to Petersen and Petersen’s pilot.

In the end, Petersen and Sylvia manage to escape and they go to live to Europe where they continue with their business.

Judy, Don y Joe stay to live with John Fittock in the Farm.

The Sugar Glider 1. What’s the relationship between Don and Sylvia like? How does it change from the beginning to the end of this story? What do you think it will be like in the future?

The relationship between Sylvia and Don was a bit confused. Don was sorry the things had got so bad between both in the past and he hoped that a year since their divorce were enough to forget it. On the other hand, Sylvia was going out with a businessman but at the time she saw Don, old feelings started to come back.

Finally the relationship changed a lot, they both discovered they still loved each other and Sylvia and Judy wanted Don to stay at the farm and start their lives together again. Perhaps they’ll get marry again and Don will put family first to flying.

2. Which character have you liked the least? Give reason for your answer including a description of the character.

The character I’ve liked the least was Patrick Forsha because he looked like the sort of rich businessman who liked to show he had money (giving Don’s daughter expensive presents in front of him, telling what he had bought to her…) and who thought everything in the world can be bought with money, even love. He also tried to sell uranium to a foreign country to bring in a few million dollars because he’d borrowed too much to set up his building company and save his business, which was about to fall.

3. Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story. Why? Because Judy was the kind of girl who was willing to take a risk: she gave advices to Don to survive when they had only water; she handled a “brumby”, a wild horse, to travel more quickly; she also made fish traps to catch fish to cook and she rode the “brumby” alone to find help when her dad fell down and broke a leg. At the end, she had to use her perfume to put it into Patrick’s eyes and then have the opportunity to jump out of the helicopter and save herself.

1.- Write about Paul and Don´s relationship focusing on the similarities and differences between both characters.

Paul and Don are old friends. In my opinion, they have a lot of things in common.

Both of them work with planes because they are pilots, although during the last year Don has flown around the beautiful islands of the Pacific Ocean and Paul hasn´t flown out of Australia, he has covered long distances into Australia.

Paul is married and he hasn´t children and Don has a daughter called Judy but he divorced one year ago.

They are very good friends and they get on very well. I think Don is more of a dreamer than Paul.

As for appearance, I imagine they are different; I think that Paul is quite tall and slim, with short brown curly hair. On the other hand, I imagine that Don is medium height, with grey hair and a moustache.

2.- Which character have you liked the least? Give reason for your answer including a description of the character.

The character that I have liked the least is Patrick Forsha; he is a businessman and Sylvia´s boyfriend.

Sylvia is Don´s ex-wife. According to the text, Patrick is a tall man with shiny black hair and he often wears suits. He has problems with his businesses and he needs a lot of money to save them. He decides to carry on an illegal business with other people and he puts in danger the lives of Paul, Don and Judy.

He gives Judy (Don and Sylvia´s daughter) a lot of expensive presents, for example: a horse, a perfume... because he wants to get on well with her.

Write a different ending to the story.

3.- Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story. Why? According to the story, Judy was a teenager when her parents got divorced. She went to live with her mother in a farm after the divorce. She didn´t see her father during the next year after the divorce and she felt unhappy. Then her father came back to Australia from the Pacific Islands and she went with him and Paul on a trip by plane, but the trip was very difficult and dangerous.

The plane crashed and Paul, who was like a grandfather for Judy, died and Don broke his leg.

When this happened, Judy had to look for help to save her father but she was alone. When the businessmen found Judy, she realised that she was in danger because they wanted to find the crashed plane and kill the survivors of the accident. Finally she got to find a friend, Joe (a Murri boy), and they could to save her father.

This incredible adventure proves that Judy was a very brave teenager.

The Sugar Glider.

Don is divorced and he has a one daughter. He is a pilot and he works a lot.

Personally, I think that he likes the DC4 airplane very much; its name is The Sugar Glider because of the Australian animal.

Silvia is the Don’s ex-wife and they have one daughter.

At the beginning of the story, their relationship is not close because they are divorced and don´t talk very much. In my opinion, Silvia would like Don to spend more time with his daughter.

During the story, they are very strong and they love Judy all the time.

At the end of the story Don says he is sorry to Sylvia and she touches his hand softly. As far as I ´m concerned Silvia and Don could have a second opportunity. I think this because, according to the text, Judy says: ‘Welcome home, Dad’.

My favorite character in this story is the character of John Fittock.

The writer points out that John is a tall man with a sunburned face and grey hair. He is holding a wide brown hat in his hand.

He is a sheep farmer, he has a wife and one son, but at that moment they are in Sidney.

From the first moment, John is very good and friendly. When Judy asks for help he calms down her, offers her to have a shower, prepares food and protects her.

Judy flew in the Sugar Glider and as far as I´m concerned she was a very brave girl because the plane crashed in the Australian outback killing the co-pilot. At this moment she cried but she didn´t panic.

Don and Judy went to a tree when they saw some brumbies and Judy said they could ride on them. They were riding the brumbies but Don fell off and he broke his leg. Judy rode the brumbies and she asked help for your father.

Her father and she revealed that the bad men put uranium on the plane to make bombs with it.

2. What’s the relationship between Don and Sylvia like? How does it change from the beginning to the end of the story? What do you think it will be like in the future?

Don and Sylvia got divorced a year ago. Don was almost all the time away, flying, and Sylvia thought that his job was more important for him than his family, so they started to have arguments. Then Don went to the Pacific Islands.

They hadn’t talked in a long time, but when they met again they found out that they still loved each other. Sylvia wanted to start a new life with her boyfriend and started to think about everything that Don did wrong to forget him; but she couldn’t and in the end she knew that she still loved him and invited him to live with her and Judy in the farm.

I think that they will give each other a new opportunity and they all will be a happy family again.

3. Who has been your favourite character in this story? Give reason for your answer, including a description of that character.

My favourite character has been Paul. I think that the reason is his generosity and how he only wanted the best for Don and his family. He accepted a dangerous flight to get a lot of money to start the flying school so Don could come to Australia, stay near his family and maybe he and his wife could start their relationship again.

Paul is a middle-aged man. He has white hair and a red face. He is incredibly generous and very kind-hearted. He was a teacher in a flying school.

5. Judy proves to be a very brave girl during the story. Why? Judy is very brave thanks to the last months she spent living in the farm. She learnt how to survive in the wild. She also learnt how to ride a horse so she could ride wild horses in the forest, after the plane crash. She went on her own to find someone to help his father, and wasn’t afraid at all when the mad and dangerous men made her a prisoner.

1º: Don and Sylvia have been married for years, but Don’s stressed life as a pilot makes them have lots of troubles, so they decided to get divorced. They are separated for a year.

They have one daughter together. She is a fourteen-year-old girl, and her name is Judy. She is an only child, and she loves her parents.

Sylvia has a new boyfriend called Patrick, who is an important rich businessman, but during the story we can discovered that his business is illegal, and he is even able to kill Judy only to win some money.

At the end of the story, Sylvia and Don say sorry to each other, and decided to give their marriage a chance.

2º: Paul Copeman, is a white-haired man. He is in his fifties. He is married to Beulah, but they don’t have any children.

He is an experimented pilot, but he is thinking of retiring in a short period of time. He hopes to win enough money to create a flying school for young people, and to work there as a teacher, because he is in love with his work.

During the story, he decides to do a job for the government because they have promised him to pay a lot of money for that. But he is finally killed in that operation.

3º: Judy proves to be a brave girl because, at first, she decided to go on the government business trip with his father and Paul, and on the second hand, when she knew her father was in danger, she looked for some help.

Finally, she argued with her mother ‘s ex-boyfriend, because he was a terrible man.