Thalia Kids' Book Club: Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Peter and the Sword of Mercy

The team behind the bestselling books that serve as prequels to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan talk about the fourth installment in their Starcatchers series with middle graders ages 9 and up. Actor Jim Dale, best known from the Harry Potter audiobooks, will perform an excerpt. The event includes a discussion with the audience, a creative writing project, and a book signing.

Download this program from Audible.com

Performance playlist:

Reading
Jim Dale

Conversation
Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, and Matthew Cody

A Conversation with the Audience

Dave Barry is the author of more than 30 books, seven in collaboration with Ridley Pearson, including Peter and the Starcatchers, Escape from the Carnivale, and Science Fair. For 25 years he was a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 500 newspapers in the United States. In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. A sitcom based on his life and writings, Dave's World, ran on CBS from 1993 to 1997. He plays lead guitar in the literary garage band The Rock Bottom Remainders. He lives in Miami with his wife, Michelle.

Matthew Cody's first novel, the superhero mystery Powerless, has been nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults 2010 by the American Library Association and was chosen as a New Voices Pick by the Association of Booksellers for Children. Powerless will be in stores this Tuesday and you can learn more about Matthew's works by visiting his website matthewcody.com

Jim Dale narrated all seven Harry Potter books and holds a Guinness World Record for creating 146 different voices for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As an audiobook narrator, Dale has won two GRAMMY Awards and a record ten Audie Awards. As a Broadway actor, he has won a Tony Award, four Drama Desk Awards, and four Outer Critics Circle Awards. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for writing the lyrics for the song Georgie Girl. He narrates the audiobooks in the Starcatcher series.

Ridley Pearson is the author of more than 25 crime fiction novels-most recently Killer Summer-as well as a dozen novels for younger readers (several co-written with Dave Barry), including Peter and the Starcatchers, which has been adapted for the stage and is being produced by Disney Theatrical. Mr. Pearson was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction at Oxford University. He plays bass in the literary garage band The Rock Bottom Remainders. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Marcelle, and two daughters.