08:52 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 4, 2004

BY BRYAN ROURKE
Journal Staff Writer

Sue Monk Kidd, author of this year's official Reading Across Rhode Island book, The Secret Life of Bees, will speak Saturday morning at Rhodes on-the-Pawtuxet in Cranston.

Bees are the buzz. So is reading.

This spring brings the making of honey and the promoting of literacy: the second annual Reading Across Rhode Island project.

The main event, jointly sponsored by librarians, teachers and lovers of books, is Saturday morning at Rhodes on-the-Pawtuxet in Cranston. A breakfast features guest speaker Sue Monk Kidd, author of this year's official statewide book, The Secret Life of Bees.

"We're trying to promote the reading of books and the sharing of discussions about books," says Louise Moulton, Providence Public Library's community service coordinator. "It's a common experience. People of all ages talk about the same thing, something with depth and value. There's a sense of community around a piece of literature."

The Secret Life of Bees was chosen by a committee of librarians and teachers, Moulton says, and was selected for its style of storytelling and its subject matter: a girl's search for a mother figure, and our society's search for justice during the 1960s civil rights era.

Kidd will be sharing her thoughts on the those subjects and her general process of writing with hundreds of Rhode Island high school students Friday through a video conference. On Saturday she'll speak again. Roughly 400 people have already signed up for the breakfast.

Last year, for the first Reading Across Rhode Island project, 125 people attended the breakfast where novelist David Baldacci spoke.

"This is an amazingly popular book," Moulton says. "People read it and pass it on."

That's the idea here; share the joy of reading. But more than that, actively promote it. Kidd, who spoke to us by phone from her South Carolina home, says people always need encouragement, even to do what's good for them.

"It's the same reason we don't exercise and eat right," Kidd says. "We have to educate, bribe and threaten people to get out there and jog and take care of their health. Taking care of the mind is just like that. Reading is like an exercise program for the human spirit."

In this time of high technology, books are basic, Kidd says. They slow the pace of our lives, she says. They make us reflect, and contribute to our collective culture.

"I believe reading creates empathy, which is a good reason to read," Kidd says. "It's good for the human heart."

The Secret Life of Bees, which was published in 2002 and was a best seller, is very loosely based on Kidd's life. While as a child she didn't have an abusive father, didn't accidentally shoot her mother and didn't run away from home as her book's main character does, Kidd was an adolescent in the 1960s. She grew up in the South, and witnessed disturbing racial prejudice and injustice.

Roughly 40 years later, Kidd, now 55, decided to write about the Civil Rights movement.

"I think there is a wound that's still healing in the South over the great racial divide that we had," Kidd says. "This is where I live. That wound is partly mine. I have to take some responsibility somewhere."

Kidd tells the story of Lily, a white 14-year-old girl who flees the abuse of her father and runs away with their black housekeeper, taking refuge in a house inhabited by black women.

Lily's journey is in part her specific search for information about her late mother, and her general search for a mother figure.

"That's ultimately something we all have, an archetypal mother, a great mother, a nurturing presence that is the source for our life," Kidd says. "Sometimes in literature a mother is rendered in a larger way and will strike a chord with our search for the nurture we need in life, not from a literal person but from something larger."

Maybe it's simply a basic understanding of the world. And Lily is confused. She knows blacks are people, but must reconcile that with the way whites treat them.

Throughout the story there's an image of a black Madonna.

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.

"Sometimes the human psyche needs a jolt," Kidd says. "We need it to yank us out of these preconceived ideas and assumptions we have about how life is structured and how it works. When you say something different, it forces you to think about things a bit."

After writing two memoirs, The Secret Life of Bees is Kidd's first work of fiction.

"Writing fiction is a fine way to tell the truth," Kidd says. "Sometimes you can tell it better in fiction than you can in memoir. People might embrace it better."

To increase the odds of that, Kidd chose to tell the story from the first-person point-of-view of her 14-year-old protagonist, which imparts an innocent, playful and childlike tone to the writing.

In one passage, Lily says "Ever since we started bomb drills at school, I couldn't help thinking my days were numbered."

And the day after Lily ran away from home, she bought a newspaper to see if there was an article about it. But all she found were stories about Malcolm X, the Beatles and the Vietnam War.

"Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world," Lily says.

The book's bee theme is a metaphor for families and the central role mothers play, something Lily discovers and shares with readers at the end of the story.

"I'd learned enough beekeeping to know that a hive without a queen was a death sentence for the bees. They would stop work and go around completely demoralized."

Reading Across Rhode Island's May Breakfast is 9 a.m. Saturday at Rhodes on-the-Pawtuxet, 60 Rhodes Place, Cranston. For tickets, which are $20 and must be purchased in advance, call (401) 455-8134