Author of the popular young adult book "Ashfall,"  Mike Mullin, will speak at Ada High School  on Tuesday, Oct. 16, during Teen Read Week.

According to Chanda Smith, high school media specialist, Mullin will speak in a high school assembly at 8:45 a.m. He will also visit with students in a high school science class.

Mullin wrote his first novel in elementary school and has been writing more or less non-stop ever since. "Ashfall" is his first published novel. He holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis.

About Ashfall:

Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don’t realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying supervolcano. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and it will erupt again, changing the earth forever.

Fifteen-year-old Alex is home alone when Yellowstone erupts. His town collapses into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence, forcing him to flee. He begins a harrowing trek in search of his parents and sister, who were visiting relatives 140 miles away.

Along the way, Alex struggles through a landscape transformed by more than a foot of ash. The disaster brings out the best and worst in people desperate for food, clean water, and shelter.  When an escaped convict injures Alex, he searches for a sheltered place where he can wait—to heal or to die. Instead, he finds Darla. Together, they fight to achieve a nearly impossible goal: surviving the supervolcano.

Awards and Honors:

International Reading Association, 2012 Young Adults' Choices list, "Survival and strength propel the novel through an all-too-real plot."

National Public Radio, 2011's Top 5 YA Novels, "This post-apocalyptic tale is one that combines reality with the stuff of nightmares, crawls under your skin, and forces you to question your own courage and survival instincts."

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