Famed “Silverwing” Author Kenneth Oppel Visits Harrowsmith PS

Oct 10, 2013

A poster taped to the front door of Harrowsmith Public School greeted author Kenneth Oppel with the words, “We love you Ken Oppel and your books!” As part of the Kingston Writers Festival, the famed Canadian children's author spoke to students at HPS about his books, what inspires them and how he goes about creating them. He spoke extensively about the first book in his trilogy titled Silverwing, which was written in 1997 and is still the best seller of the 28 books he has penned to date.

The book’s plot centers around a Canadian silver-haired insectivore bat named Shade, and the adventures he experiences with Marina, an eastern red bat who was booted out of her colony after being banded. The two experience many adventures as they try to reunite Shade with his mother and colony. The popularity of the trilogy eventually led to an animated TV series but Oppel explained that he had tried to make his bat characters as real as possible; he did not want them to seem like just cartoon creations. He pointed out some amazing bat facts, like the fact that there are1000 different species; how bats use echo location to find food; how some consume 1000 bugs in a single night and how they catch insects with their tails, then flip them into their wings, and from wing to mouth. He spoke of how he used real life locations as the backdrops in the trilogy, thus investing the books with real place facts and real life landmarks.

He spoke of his second trilogy of adventure stories called Airborn, set in an imaginary past about 100 years ago, which resembles earth prior to the First World War except that in the stories airplanes had not been invented. Instead people travel and live on huge air ships, which Oppel said were inspired by both the airships of the 1930s like the Hindenburg and huge cruise liners like the Titanic.

The ship is called Aurora and the hero is a 15-year-old cabin boy (Matt Cruse) who essentially lives in the sky. The stories are about his adventures with his friend, a ship passenger Kate de Vries. Together they explore desert islands, mysterious ghost airships carrying treasures and discover new species of animals.

One of Oppel’s more recent works is a book titled “Half Brother”, which was inspired by two experiments done on chimpanzees in the 1970s. Half Brother is about Ben Tomlin, a 13-year-old boy whose scientist parents adopt a nine-day-old chimpanzee named Zan. They bring Zan home as an experiment and undertake to teach him sign language while trying to raise him as a human child. Oppel explained that Ben is expected to be big brother to this baby chimp. The story is about their relationship, how Zan changes Ben's entire family and what happens when this very strange experiment starts to go "terribly, terribly wrong.”

Oppel said that he wrote two of his most recent works, “This Dark Endeavor” and “Such Wicked Intent” as prequels to one of his own most beloved novels, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein”. The books tell of a teenage Victor Frankenstein, his weird, dangerous and appalling escapades and his sick twin brother Conrad. There are towers, dungeons and secret passages and of course the adventures as Victor tries to find the elixir of life.

HPS Principal Valerie Arsenault was thrilled to have Oppel visit. “It's great for the students here to have a chance to meet, listen to and ask questions of the author behind the books that they adore and have been reading for years.” Oppel's visit generated a lot of excitement and numerous questions from his young audience, who were captivated by his presentation. Oppel himself said that a personal visit from an author gives young readers “a chance to meet the person who thinks about these subjects and creates these stories. I believe it will further their interest in writing and reading and it also helps to generate interest in my work.”

Following his presentation students lined up with books, which Oppel graciously signed.