A book about Colton's journey to heaven broke all sales records

Almaty. April 22. Kazakhstan Today - A boy who almost died from a ruptured appendix and later said he had met his great grandfather in heaven is now best selling author, Kazakhstan Today reports.

A book about Colton's journey - Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (Thomas Nelson, $16.99) - is such a phenomenon that its Nashville publisher says it has broken all sales records for the company. For the past three weeks, it has been No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. Today it drops to No. 2, behind Water for Elephants, USA Today reported.

"We now have 3.4 million books in print, and that doesn't include the popular e-book version. This little book of hope and comfort is being bought in bulk by people all over the world," says Matt Baugher, vice president and publisher of Thomas Nelson, which specializes in Christian books and Bibles.

Heaven, released in November as a paperback original with a first printing of 40,000 copies, was written by Colton's father, the Rev. Todd Burpo, who has a small evangelical congregation in Imperial, Neb.

Colton is famous for being the boy who had a near-death experience when he was 4 years old during emergency surgery for a burst appendix. Doctors offered little hope he would survive.

Not only did he live, he says he went to heaven during the operation, met Jesus, John the Baptist, his great-grandfather and a sister he didn't even know he had (she was miscarried before he was born), then came back to tell his folks about the trip.

Three things convinced the Burpos their son had gone to heaven: his knowledge of where they were when he was being operated on, his claim that he met a sister he never knew even existed, and his declaration that he met his great-grandfather, a man he never knew but could readily identify later from photographs of the man at a young age. (The good news, Colton says, is that people are younger in heaven; and his miscarried sister was a little girl with a striking family resemblance who introduced herself.) His total time in heaven: three minutes.

Colton is very specific about what he saw and heard, right down to what the angels sang to him. "Well, they sang Jesus Loves Me and Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho," he told his parents. Heaven also was filled with bright colors and lots of rainbows.

He knew exactly where he was, too. "I was sitting on Jesus' lap," he said, looking his father right in the eye when he shared that piece of information.

In Nebraska, Todd Burpo also runs a garage door company and is a wrestling coach and a volunteer fireman. The Burpos have two other children, Cassie, 14, and Colby, 6. They are a Midwestern family to the core.

"We're parents like any other parents. We have the same issues every parent deals with. We question God, too. We run into the same storms as anyone," Burpo says, referring to Colton's fight for his life when he was 4.

His mother says her son hasn't changed all that much since the otherworldly trip he says he took seven years ago. She says it also helps that "we know him."

Colton is a wrestler and is active in his school's music program. He sings, plays the trumpet and, for his recent piano recital, played two numbers, The Star- Spangled Banner to open and the theme from The Pink Panther to end. He wants to be a musician when he grows up.

Colton's fame is growing. He is scheduled to be on NBC's Dateline on May 1 and has already done a round of TV including Fox & Friends and the Today show. There is even talk of a movie deal, but no decision has been made.

Photo: Daily Mail

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