Students in Years 7 and 8 were excited to welcome Alex Scarrow, British author of the award-winning TimeRiders series, this Wednesday 29^th of April. Scarrow began his presentation with an animated summary of his personal life and career, capturing the children’s attention right from the beginning.

Scarrow explained to the audience how his life’s career choices and work experience moulded the ideas for his award-winning series of books. Scarrow opened up about what it was like to work for various game designing companies – including what it was like to be paid for playing video games at work! One of Scarrow’s main concerns with his former employers in the gaming industry was the fact that they underestimated the sophistication of young adults and they often turned down his ideas for more mind-challenging games. Eventually his frustrations with the industry lead him to quit and become an author.

Prior to publishing TimeRiders, Scarrow also published ‘The Candle Man’, ‘A Thousand Suns’, ‘Last Light’, ‘Afterlight’ and ‘October Skies’. However it was his latest science fiction series, TimeRiders, which captured the attention of many young adults and even film producers.

The nine-book, complex time-travel series is essentially ‘a video game in words’. It revolves around three teens who are recruited by an agency known as 'The Agency' moments before their deaths. The job of The Agency is to protect the established set of events throughout history.

Scarrow gave a wonderfully animated presentation of his journey and made the students laugh during his entire visit. He ended the presentation with a live reading of two chapters from one of the books. Students were given the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation or to speak to him personally during the sale and signing of his books.

Later on in the day, Scarrow lead a workshop with the Year 7 and 8 students in their classrooms. Within the workshop Scarrow showed the students techniques on how to tap into the creative mind in order to generate original ideas.

The School wishes to thank Mr Scarrow for his visit and for inspiring the students to use their creativity in such an entertaining way!