The Ogden School Foundation announced this week that Sy Montgomery will headline this year’s fundraiser on Oct. 2 and speak with Ogden School District students about her experiences as an author the following day.

“She is just fascinating,” Ogden School Foundation Executive Director Brynn Murdock said. “I love (that) the Boston Globe said she’s, ‘Part Indiana Jones, part Emily Dickinson,” and I think that’s the perfect way to describe her. She’s a naturalist, knows all about different animals. It’s nonfiction, but she brings these human-sociology type elements to animals and how they give us such great life lessons.”

Even the beginning of Montgomery’s biography on the Ogden School Foundation’s event page screams adventure.

“To research her articles, films, and 38 books for adults and children, nationally bestselling author Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Rwanda, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels, and pink dolphins in the Amazon,” it reads. “She has searched the Altai Mountains of Mongolia’s Gobi for snow leopards, hiked into the trackless cloud forest of Papua New Guinea to radio collar tree kangaroos, and learned to SCUBA dive in order to commune with octopuses.”

Photo supplied, Ogden School Foundation

Montgomery’s works include The Good Good Pig, Spell of the Tiger, What the Chicken Knows and How to Be a Good Creature.

And in that spirit, Murdock said that this year’s essay contest among district fifth and sixth graders is themed “How to be a Good Creature — Lessons that we can learn from the animals around us.”

“She’ll speak to the fifth and sixth graders,” Murdock said. “We’ll honor 10 student winners at our gala from the essay contest. We’ve partnered with our science specialists to do some science learning classes around animals before she comes. It’s kind of an all-encompassing event that we’re super excited about.”

As in past years, the 29th annual Fall Author Event will feature a gala on Thursday night and an event focused on students the following day.

“We have a student essay writing contest, we have fun learning activities going on within the classroom centered around this author and then the author goes and does an assembly,” Murdock said.

Murdock said the foundation’s most important fundraising event of the year goes well beyond simply bringing in some money.

“As a foundation, our promise is to provide educational enhancement opportunities for the students of Ogden School District,” she said. “We have five focus areas — math and science, literacy, the arts, technology and student and staff well-being. We love that this fundraiser not only helps us raise needed funds, but it also lives and breathes our mission of literacy — both within the community and our schools.”

For more information and to participate in this year’s Ogden School Foundation Fall Author Event, visit https://www.ogdenschoolfoundation.org/fallauthor.