Zooms connects BVHS students with 'Life of Pi' author

By: 
Jamie Hult, Staff writer
BVHS English students chatted with "Life of Pi" author Yann Martel virtually, via Zoom, last week. Matt Christensen's students have been interviewing Martel every spring via Skype for more than 10 years. Submitted photo
Every spring, Matt Christensen’s advanced English students get to pick the brain of world-renowned author Yann Martel.
Martel is the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, which won the 2002 Man Booker and was adapted into a major motion picture in 2012. 
For the past 10-plus years, the students have gathered in the BVHS community room to Skype with Martel. But this year’s interview, which took place last week, had a change of setting.
As senior Trout Tucker put it, “I thought it was really cool to be able to sit in my bed and watch and listen to such an amazing, influential writer.”
Eighty-five students virtually attended the video conference with Martel via Zoom.
“It is very generous of him to communicate with our classes and take time out of his day to chat with us and give us some more insight about him,” said Ella Simonson in a group blog post following the event. “I am very thankful that we were able to Zoom with him today given the situation that we are not physically in school.”
Christensen has never met Martel in person, though he’s been in contact with him since 2003.
The BV teacher was dividing his summer days between working as a Barnes & Noble bookseller and a HyVee butcher when he discovered and devoured Martel’s masterpiece.
“I changed my life,” he said, and he embarked on a journey to contact the author.
“I went through an agent, an editor, a publicist, a journalist, and I finally got to him,” Christensen said. “One of his assistants said to him, ‘Here’s an unusually simple request. All this teacher wants to do is email with you and have you answer his students’ questions.’”
The students who interviewed Martel are in Rising Scholars English, and they’re simultaneously earning college credit.
Christensen maintains a delicate relationship with the author, only emailing him in March for the annual meet-up.
“He said it’d be fun to do something normal in abnormal times,” Christensen said after contacting Martel last month. “You only have to listen to him for a few minutes to know that he is extraordinarily intelligent. And just really kind and really nice … A lot of the authors I teach aren’t even alive, so it’s cool to have one accessible to students.”
Life of Pi is the story of a teenage boy, Pi Patel. After deciding to sell their zoo in India and move to Canada, Pi’s parents board a freighter with their sons and a few remaining animals. When a terrible storm sinks the ship, Pi and a fearsome Bengal tiger find refuge aboard the lifeboat. As days turn into weeks and weeks drag into months, Pi and the tiger must learn to trust each other if both are to survive.
BV students, who also read Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, asked around 12 questions during the interview with the author. And they didn’t necessarily draw the same conclusions.
“Inherently and visually, he seemed like just a regular guy, but a couple sentences in I could tell that he has reached a different capacity than the average person will ever reach,” said Emily Hensley. “He knows something about everything and still seems curious about learning more and stretching himself. As someone who has always been interested in history and is planning on studying it next year, I was super impressed with the fine details he could just rattle off about different eras of war or human nature.”
“It was nice to see how Martel is also human, like you and me,” said Megan Pickering. “We received a glimpse into his life; he has a wife and four kids, a college degree, and a love for traveling. There is indeed a real person behind these great literary feats. Sometimes when reading, I forget that someone wrote this with a lot of hard work, and that it's not simply a robot who eats, sleeps, and breathing writing.”
Christensen was happy to talk about Martel and teaching.
“We just appreciate the coverage and to show people we’re still doing great stuff at Brandon Valley High School,” he said.

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