WHEN YOU HAVE your next science lesson, have a good look at your teacher. Is he who you think he is? Does he become someone else the minute he walks out of the lab?
Pupils at the SS John Fisher and Thomas Moor RC High School in Colne, a small town in the north-west of England, know that their physics teacher leads a double life. In term time, he is Mr Chapman, second in command of the science department. But when school is over, Mr Chapman becomes Simon Chapman, explorer extraordinaire and jungle addict.
There aren't any jungles in England, so Chapman has to travel thousands of kilometres to do his exploring. Chapman is also the author of Explorers Wanted! - a thrill-a-minute series of paperback books about the art of exploring.
Each book in the series takes us step by step, danger by danger, on a challenging expedition into the middle of the unknown. Wild beasts lurk in the undergrowth, local tribes hide in the shadows and croc-infested swamps are around every corner.
Explorers Wanted! are unique books crammed with gruesome details, hands-on challenges and cool information to make sure we survive the expedition. We might get a few bug-bites and bruises as we hack our way through the jungle with our expert guide, but we don't notice minor things like this amid all the excitement.
Chapman inherited his love of nature from his father who used to take him on family holidays into the depths of the English countryside. Early in his teaching career, Chapman made trips to Indonesia and Latin America and he became addicted to rainforests. In 1994, he received an Earthwatch teacher's grant to study monkeys in Sri Lanka and his sketchbooks and diaries from this expedition won an award from a top wildlife magazine.