Imagine somebody came and asked you to get three different groups of students at the age of 6-12 years to reflect on the magic of stories, the power of reading, animal protection and have them enjoy it all the while. Would you have any idea how to do that? Well, Piers Torday definitely did when he came to meet our students on 08 May 2019.
During the almost 90 minute sessions Piers Torday easily connected and never lost touch with his audience. In his very own and entertaining way he told the students about his first contact with books (when crawling through his mother’s book shop), his experiences with stories and how the magic of “black marks on white paper turning into a different movie for everyone is a magic no science has managed to explain”. From his personal experiences with being read to and with stories in general he moved on to the story of him becoming a writer and an author. Furthermore, he pointed out the “state of the art idea generator” every one of us has and how he got to develop his idea for “The last wild”. Our students also got to know that even Roald Dahl rewrote his famous story of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” so that in future there should not be any reason of worrying about not getting a story right at the very first try.
Everyone present clearly enjoyed listening to Piers Torday and the very next day there was not only a significantly higher demand for Roald Dahl books in the library but also for those written by Piers Torday.
Who knows, maybe there will be a day when an author will be standing in front of students talking about how Piers Torday inspired her/him back in the days of May 2019 …