On Monday, as part of “World Book Week”, author Andy Briggs came in to school to talk about the books and 
comics he has written. He is best known for his hero.com and villain.net series of books.
He is also a screenwriter and has worked on many television shows and films all around the world.
He has now written a trilogy of books called Tarzan. The stories are based on the famous character but with a modern twist set in the African Congo jungle.
Each book is an adventure story with a strong message about conservation in Africa. He tackles the subjects of logging, illegal mining and the illegal capture of gorillas. A percentage of the profit raised from his books will go towards helping apes in Cameroon via the Ape Action Africa charity.
Andy has recently been to Cameroon with the charity making video blogs used for teaching subjects such as deforestation and logging.
After he explained about his books, we did a fun quiz about the jungle. This was a multiple choice test to see if we would be able to survive if a plane we were in crashed in a jungle.
After answering all the questions we analysed the answers which determined whether we would have either survived, were still alive but not in good health or didn’t survive. This was only a bit of fun but did teach us a little about surviving in the jungle.
As well as writing, Andy Briggs has now started to produce some Hollywood films with Universal Studios. His new film called “Legendary: Tomb of the Dragon” was filmed in 3D last year and is due to be released this year.
It was an inspirational and thought provoking talk. If no pupils became writers, there would be no such things as television, gaming stations, films or even books, to mention but a few. This proves that authors and writing affects all of our lives in so many different ways and should not be taken for granted. This shocked a few people!