Author, adventurer and mountain summiter Matt Dickinson visited Lower School on Thursday 22 September; the boys are in the midst of reading his trilogy of books, The Everest Files, and his visit was hotly anticipated! Matt spent time with both Year 7 and 8, discussing his books and his time climbing Everest earlier this year, as well as holding creative working workshops to encourage a future novelist! The visit was organised by Digital Librarian Miss Claire Knight, along with Mrs Eleanor Hallam. Thank you to Miss report on the visit:
‘It was a great pleasure to have Matt with us once again. During his visit in February, we heard all about his novel The Everest Files and his experiences climbing Everest and other mountains. Lower school were enthralled by his experiences and the amazing stories that he told us. Matt updated us on his summer adventures, which involved a return trip to Everest to complete filming another documentary, and the publication of his latest novel, the second instalment in the Everest Files series, North Face. The novel opens with a dramatic earthquake and Matt spoke of his own experiences of earthquakes and avalanches.
Matt then got us set on some creative writing. We had to first detail three things that we would miss from home if we were to climb Everest. Many of us said we would miss family, friends and pets the most. There was some lovely descriptive writing from the boys about various pets and family members. We then had to think about a tent buddy for our time on Everest. Whilst many of us immediately thought of friends or family, Matt added in a twist – we had to have a fictional character for our tent buddy! This could be any character from fiction and we were to detail why we would take them and how they would be useful to us, or even potentially a problem! For our final writing task, we had to think what it would be like if we were to be in a storm on the mountain. Matt gave us details of some of his experiences in the storms. Again, there was some lovely descriptive writing from the boys and a few novels in the making!
It was an excellent morning with Matt. One sentence from the morning really stuck in the mind: ‘if there is one thing that I hope you can all take away from today’s session, it is a spark of adventure.’ Lower School and staff thoroughly enjoyed hearing about his experiences and recent adventures. We are all really excited for the third novel in the series.’
