Hughes is also the author of LEMONADE MOUTH, which the Disney Channel is making into a movie to air in September, that has been heralded as “the next High-School Musical” here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T0KG20100430.  

For decades the world has been warming and is now fraught with increasingly violent hurricanes and other dangerous weather patterns. In order to keep people secure, a giant company named InfiniCorp built protective domes over artificial cities. Thirteen-year-old Eli Papadopolous is the favorite grandson of Grandfather Papadopolous, the CEO of InfiniCorp, but has little ambition to do well in his InfiniCorp management studies, preferring instead to imagine the stories he reads in books.

One day, the dome’s artificial sky begins to act strange, turning odd colors and making peculiar patterns that grow progressively worse over time. Eli notices this change, and begins to ask questions about the conditions outside the dome. Despite InfiniCorp’s assurances that all will be well, the company doesn’t seem able to fix it. Eli hears from operatives from a dangerous band of terrorists, The Friends of Gustavo—or Foggers—that a massive storm, created by the planet’s overuse of fossil fuels as energy, is brewing beyond the dome’s walls and threatens to destroy everything. As he races to warn everyone and uncover a solution, he exposes secrets that his family has kept for decades, and learns more about himself, and his strength, than he ever thought possible.

About the author: Mark Peter Hughes was born in Liverpool, England but grew up in the coastal town of Barrington, Rhode Island.  He attend the University of Rochester where he earned a degree in Engineering with a minor in Creative Writing.  Mark now lives in Wayland, Massachusetts with his wife, Karen, and their three small children:  Evan, Lucía, and Zoe.  He has written stories ever since he can remember.

Praise for LEMONADE MOUTH: “Young readers who've experienced the qualms of disrespect from the in-crowd will identify with the plight and the fight. Told from the perspective of the band members in diary entries, their individual characters emerge to charm readers, blending into a work with as much soul as Lemonade Mouth's music.” – Kirkus

“Hughes tells the story of the band, Lemonade Mouth, through alternating, first-person narratives by the band members, strung together with a fan's additional narrative that chronicles the band's many misadventures. Different fonts and radically different verbal styles help identify the six different voices and make the long story easy to follow. A side plot involving a student-led fight to save the school's one organic frozen-lemonade machine adds nonconformist ideology and supplies the band's name. Hughes' obvious musical knowledge contributes greatly to the verisimilitude; young musicians into indie music will appreciate this romp, which includes some satisfying romantic moments and many epiphanies as the band members work out their individual problems by working together.” – Booklist