A Message from Elizabeth Roberts, Lt. Governor

The past few weeks have been challenging for all of us in Rhode Island as we endured historic flooding that shut down roads around the state, closed and flooded businesses and swept through basements and entire houses, displacing some residents.

I visited the Westerly Red Cross shelter the week of the floods, thanking the volunteers and speaking with the more than fifty people who had been forced from their homes by the rising water. It was so stressful for them. But I noticed that many of them were passing the time reading. There were children and adults in the center sitting at the long tables usually used for meals, engrossed in a book.

Right now, readers around the state are participating in the Reading Across Rhode Island. This year’s book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. An odd title. A delightful book. I began it on the day I visited Westerly. I, too, found myself engrossed in a world far from RI where a community came together to endure hardship—in their case, the five-year Nazi occupation of Guernsey Island in the middle of the English Channel. The literary society of the title arose by accident, when trying to explain a curfew violation to the occupying soldiers, but it became a means for surviving, maintaining a community during a time of privation.

The bonds created by sharing books (each member could choose their own, with often unexpected results) helped many survive and endured well beyond the end of the war. This book, set in 1946, shows how the society and the shared love of reading, whether it was Marcus Aurelius or cookbook recipes, helped define the future of this island community.

It seems a particularly appropriate time for RIers to be sharing the experience of reading. May it bind us together and help us to survive hardship, as it did for those in the Westerly Red Cross shelter as well as for those fictional characters many decades and thousands of miles away.

Annie Barrows talks about Ivy and Bean

Annie Barrows will be in town on May 1st for the Reading Across Rhode Island annual breakfast, and to discuss her part in finishing this year’s RARI selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

But she is also the author of the famous children’s series of books about Ivy and Bean. Ms. Barrows has written 6 books about this fabulous pair of young girls, who manage to get into and out of adventures on a regualr basis.

Annie Barrows will talk to her Ivy and Bean fans at the Warwick Public Library on Friday, April 30th at 4:00pm. Barnes and Noble booksellers will be there if you want to purchase any Ivy and Bean books, which Ms Barrows will happily autograph!

Come hear about Annie’s inspiration for her books; how she writes her stories and maybe get a hint of their next adventure!

RI Author's Corner: Mark Peter Hughes in his own words....

How did you become an author?

I've make up stories all my life. I've written them as long as I've been able to write. My first published novel got the attention of my editor, Stephanie Lane Elliott, at Random House, after I submitted it to the Delacorte Press Young Adult Novel Competition. I've been working with her ever since.

What three books or authors most influenced your style and why?
Jeez, this is a tough one because there are so many that I've loved. Some of my favorites as a child that I still love now are The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald. As a teenager I loved The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, The World According to Garp by John Irving and The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin. I also love Paul Micou, Barbara O'Connor, Phillip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll and Kurt Vonnegut. There are so many more, but that's more than three, so I'll stop there.

What projects are you working on now? What is your favorite book you have written and why?
I always like the one I'm writing. My first book, I Am the Wallpaper, was special because it was the first one and there never any quarantee it would ever get published. It was just fun to write a story. I wasn't even aware that I was writing a young adult novel until it was mostly finished. I was just writing about a teenager.

My second book, Lemonade Mouth, was a challenge because it's the story of a high school band told from the five different perspectives of the band members. I like to write funny, so that was a fun one to write.

I just finished my third book, A Crack in the Sky, which is the first in a science-fiction series about a future America where global warming has gone to an extreme and everything is so hot and stormy that they've had to put protective domes over all of the cities. Man, that was a tough book to write because it was so different from anything else I've done before, but I'm very happy with it and can't wait until it comes out in the fall. Now I'm writing the second book in the series - which is called The Greenhouse Chronicles. Like I say, whatever I'm writing now is always my favorite.

People are always curious about an author's writing process. How do you approach your work?

I'm a write-at-home dad with three kids so I fit writing in whenever I can. After I get them on the bus I usually get a tall cup of coffee and start typing. I think if you really want to write, then you have to sit down and write. You can't be one of those who say they're going to write someday. Today is that day. If I write today then I'm a writer today. So that's what I do.

[For more information and updates about what Mark is doing now, visit the Mark Peter Hughes website.]