Proud to share that Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up has just been selected as a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the 2013! Hooray!
(link)
“Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up” Named a Bank Street Best Childrens Book of 2013!
Is it just me or is the A Crack In The Sky future starting to feel less and less like sci-fi?
Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears
THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 10, 2013
The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years…The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea… (read full article)
Fan-made LM Book trailer
Just saw this, made by a fan. Nice. Many thanks!
Top 10 Library Book
This from the nice folks at the Franklin, MA Public Library. Coolness! 
World Building
An early sketch for the cover of my futuristic novel A CRACK IN THE SKY by the amazing artist Per Haagensen
Some thoughts for writers:
In some ways the writerly concept called “world building” is just another way of saying “writing”. Still, no matter your story’s genre, taking the time to think through and organize some of the story-world’s details and rules up front can help keep the story coherent, consistent and feeling ‘real’ (and save you lots of rework time later). Whether you’re writing sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary realistic, or any other flavor of fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter), the following non-exhaustive list of considerations is intended only as thought-starters as you begin to organize and plan.
What is your story’s world?
A Few Questions/Considerations
Place and Time:
- When and where does the story take place? An current-day town on an ordinary day? Future Earth? Another planet? An imagined ‘Almost-Earth’? A suburban garage? Somewhere else?
- What is the geography? Terrain?
- What is the climate?
- Is it a time/place that really existed? Is it totally imagined? Where do the real and imaged overlap?
Interview Jan 31, 2013
I was interviewed by kids from the school newspaper at the Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School in Franklin, MA on 1/31/2013. Coolness… (But I’m not sure what took me so dang long to get rid of that pizza plate.)
Music’s Powerful Effect On Our Teenage Lives…And Beyond
Mark Peter Hughes
When I was a teenager music was a big part of my life. It still is. But there’s something about the music we listen to when we’re in our teens that sets it apart, it seems to me. At that age music is more than just music, it’s a statement about who we are. We have lots of time for it—at least I did. Time to sit around and listen to a new album, taking in each song, track by track, lick by lick, lyric by lyric, over and over. Absorbing it until it becomes not only a part of us, but the soundtrack of that pivotal chapter in our lives.
I turned thirteen in 1979, so for me it was Talking Heads, The Cars, The Clash, Elvis Costello, the B-52s, The Pretenders, Madness. These sounds (and many others) are now like my own personal time machines, emotionally evocative with a specific power no other music could ever have for me. Even now when I listen to “Planet Claire” by the B-52s or “My City Was Gone” by the Pretenders, I’m a teenager again in a way that simply never happens when I listen to other music, even great music, that wasn’t of that era in my life.
But the music of our teens is more than just a source of nostalgia—and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this. In ways large and small, the soundtrack of those years actually affected who I became. Really.
An example.
In 1983 I was at my friend Shawn Hainsworth’s house when… (continue reading)
Ba-BAM! Tanasia and Me
3rd grader Tanasia K. & Mark Peter Hughes
Yesterday I was in Madison, NJ and ran into a family friend, 8 year old Tanasia K., a singer, dancer, actress, and big-time Lemonade Mouth fan, who told me that her friends never believe her when she says she knows me and my family. Here you go, Tanasia – evidence. She told me that once I post this picture she could show it to her friends and say, “Ba-BAM! Proof!” So, let’s all say it together:
Ba-BAM! Proof!
Olivia and Wen: Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up
Without a word we started walking along the water together, Olivia and me. The tide was going out, and after a few steps we took off our shoes and let the waves roll over our feet in the soft wet sand. There was a sailboat in the distance. Behind it, a line of pink puffy clouds looked like the castle wall of a faraway country. We stopped to look.
“Do you ever feel lonely, Wen?” she asked. “Like we’re just small parts in a giant, complicated universe?”
“I’m not lonely,” I said. “I’m here with you.”
She blinked at me. Then something unexpected happened. She reached out and touched my cheek, staring right into my eyes, and kissed me. And I kissed back. It was a real kiss, soft gentle and quiet, the kind that gets your blood rushing and your head spinning, and when it was done I just stood there, surprised, looking at her, focusing on every inch of her face.
And she was looking back at me.
- From Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up
Do you ever have moments where you feel like we’re all just small parts of a complicated universe? Or do you think its better to live life moment by moment without wondering or worrying? Let me know your thoughts! – MPH
On authors, readers, and the Internet
“YARN: You have your very own YouTube channel, tweet regularly, and post often on your website. Do you feel that these are now required extensions of your profession? Is this more so in YA or just a general shift in contemporary literature? Do you think social media creates more of a bond between author and reader?
MPH: This is yet another area in which I’m by no means an expert. I just do what feels natural and right by connecting with readers online. I appreciate the power the Internet brings in enabling authors like myself to hear from and speak with those who wish to connect with me.”
- An except from YARN’s interview with Mark Peter Hughes
I'm an author of novels for teens and 'tweens including 
