By Cate Lecuyer
Staff writer
May 12, 2008 05:45 am BEVERLY — Author Mark Peter Hughes knows people do indeed judge a book by its cover, and Beverly High School students who saw the neon yellow binding of "Lemonade Mouth" were eager to take it off the shelf. "After Julius Caesar we were like, 'This is great,'" said sophomore Bridget Leahy. Nothing against Shakespeare, but in Hughes' story about five high-schoolers in a band — called "Lemonade Mouth" — who each tell the story with their own voices and personalities, students were able to connect to at least one of the characters. Via diary entries, each band member reveals the challenges of trying to fit in and navigating the treacherous waters of friendship, teen romance and even commercial exploitation. As the teen rockers pay the price for questioning authority, they triumph by earning the respect of their peers while staying true to themselves. After analyzing the book in class, students then gained an even deeper perspective when Hughes visited the school on Friday. "Now I can understand the book more," said sophomore Courtney Brennan. Sophomore Justin Lehman agreed. "You know what he was thinking," he said. Hughes talked about the characters, the writing and editing process, the joy of fulfilling a childhood dream by becoming an author, and the stress of having a publishing contract. "They gave me a chunk of money, and now I have to justify it," he said. Students listened as he described his job as an electrical engineer in Cambridge, and how he finally forced himself to take his new company laptop to Starbucks on May 4, 2001, and pledged to write a little bit each day from that point forth. He talked about his childhood and how he comes up with stories, his struggle with the first draft, and how he became a writer. He talked about the difficulty of typing words onto a blank screen, and encouraged students to share their own writing with other people, even if, like his early stories, it's really bad. "What I wrote was truly awful, but I wrote a lot of it," he said. In a moment of spontaneity, he began reading the prologue and first chapter of his next book, "The Wild Orange Yonder," that so far he's only shared with his wife and a few close friends. Students said they were impressed with his openness about writing, when sometimes they're embarrassed to share work they don't particularly love. "He wears it like a badge of honor," said sophomore Bridget Leahy. "It's inspiring," sophomore Lydia Maggiacomo added. English teacher Barbara Trudeau said once students are finished reading the required books they can "broaden their horizons." A teacher who was taking a young adult reading class at Salem State College recommended the book for freshman and sophomores. The PTSO stepped in with funding to buy the books, and Trudeau made up lesson plans as she went along. "We still studied style, we still studied characterization, we still studied imagery," Trudeau said. "But I wanted it to be fun for them."
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