On 18 November, Year 8 students journeyed across the road to Larkmead School for an author visit from Olivia Levez.
This event was made possible by Mostly Books, an independent bookshop in Abingdon.
Levez talked about her new release, Silver. Excitingly, St Helen’s and Larkmead were the first two schools she spoke to about her new novel.
Silver is about a sixteen-year-old alien who is tasked with a mission to invade Earth and infiltrate a human family, inhabit a human being and feedback information to their people to see if Earth is inhabitable.
Levez discussed why aliens matter in stories, and shared that the three most common alien tropes in fiction are first contact, invasion and body snatching, and how each is used in her novel.
She also mentioned how she got the idea for this novel from growing up in Wiltshire, which happens to be famous in the UK for its National Convention of Crop Circles.
As this novel was her first foray into Science Fiction, Levez spoke about her research process and how she came up with the themes in her novel. She said she tried to imagine what the characters’ lives were like and what circumstances led them to invade and inhabit another planet. She then opened the floor to questions.
Students had the chance to preorder the book and have it signed at the end of the session.
