Nationally-Known Author Ridley Pearson To Appear In Key West Next Sunday

Ridley Pearson, the best-selling author of the Kingdom Keepers books for children, prides himself on doing careful research for his fiction. But for Pearson, that research might mean riding a Peter Pan’s Flight ride at a Disney park 10 times in a single day.

Pearson will be talking about his new Kingdom Keepers book, The Return: Legacy of Secrets, at Books & Books at the Studios of Key West, 533 Eaton St., on Saturday at 3 p.m.

The Kingdom Keepers are five teenagers who work as hosts at Disney theme parks. But at night, they battle Disney villains for the survival of the Magic Kingdom—and the world. To set the scenes for his books, Pearson has full access to Disney Parks, even when they are closed: “If you want something creepy,” he said in an interview last year, “going into Disney World, a place that holds 80,000 to 100,000 people with no one in it, it’s just terrifying, I mean it’s like a ghost town.”

In addition to his books for children, Pearson also writes popular thrillers for adults, such as the Risk Agent spy series. In 2004, he and the columnist and humor writer Dave Barry teamed up to write the bestselling children’s novel, Peter and the Starcatchers, which was later adapted for stage and became a Broadway hit.

Pearson has often been asked about the difference between writing for adults and children. “Storytelling is storytelling,” he says, “and I don’t ‘write down’ to kids. I don’t say, ‘Oh I’m writing for kids now.’ I just try to write a story I’d like to read and if it happens to have kids in it, that’s good.”

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]