Wayland Author Mark Peter Hughes Visits Goodnow Library

Young fans of Mark Peter Hughes, along with their parents, attended a special visit by the Wayland writer to Sudbury's on Monday.

Hughes is the author of three books for young adults. The second of these, "Lemonade Mouth," chronicles the lives of five misunderstood high school freshmen who form a band that takes their school by storm. Hughes read an excerpt from the book and answered questions about what it was like to have the book made into a popular Disney TV movie, which .

Following a countrywide road trip with his wife and three children to promote the book, Hughes and his family were invited to travel to New Mexico to watch the filming of the movie and meet the Disney stars who appeared in the production.

“Suddenly, here they all were doing this scene that I had made up!” he said. “It was really unbelievable.”

Although Hughes felt that luck had played a big part in having his book chosen as the basis for a movie, he encouraged kids in the audience interested in writing to stick with it by reading and writing as much as possible. For his part, Hughes gets up early each morning to write and feels that “many boxes full of bad writing” accumulated over a lifetime have been vital in honing his skills.

Hughes’s latest book is a venture into science fiction called "A Crack in the Sky," in which a teenaged protagonist is pitted against a shady, futuristic corporation that preys upon public fears after the world undergoes catastrophic climate change. Sequels to both "A Crack in the Sky" and "Lemonade Mouth" are in the works.

For more information on the author, visit www.markpeterhughes.com.