Tonight, kids came to Central Library to answer questions about the book Big Nate: In a Class By Himself by Lincoln Peirce. Before we started our battle, our very own “Big Nate” showed what makes him “surpass all others”–his MAD RUBIX CUBE SKILLZ!! Teen volunteer Nathan demonstrated he can solve a […]
Mother Daughter Book Club: The Secret Hum of a Daisy
Published on :This month, our Mother Daughter book club for girls 11 and up and their moms read a beautiful book called The Secret Hum of a Daisy by Tracy Holczer. And at last night’s meeting, we were graced by a special guest: Tracy Holczer! We had a great turnout, around 25 […]
Songwriting for Ages 8-12 with Emily Arrow
Published on :On January 15, 2016 Pasadena Library’s monthly Kids’ Writing Workshop had a very special guest instructor to teach songwriting: Emily Arrow! Emily (www.emilyarrow.com) tours all over the country performing her songs about children’s literature, and has a CD coming out in February. She presented a wonderful workshop sharing books and […]
Songwriting for Ages 5-8 with Emily Arrow
Published on :On January 12, 2016 Pasadena Library’s monthly Creative Writing for Beginning Readers workshop (ages 5-8) had a very special guest instructor to teach songwriting: Emily Arrow! Emily (www.emilyarrow.com) tours all over the country performing her songs about children’s literature, and has a CD coming out in February. She presented a […]
Lucha Libros: Ramona the Pest
Published on :On Tuesday night, January 5th, kids came to the Donald R. Wright Auditorium to do battle in Lucha Libros and answer questions about the book Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. The questions are always in English and Spanish because the books are, too! Many kids come to us from the […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop 12/18/15: Fractured Fairytales
Published on :On Friday Dec. 18th, our kids’ writing workshop made up new stories involving one or more fairytale characters. Kids got to draw two names from a basket–these were names of characters from some European or American fairytale, such as Brothers Grimm fairytales or Hans Christian Andersen fairytales, and usually not from the […]
Infant Storytime: Toys
Published on :Tuesday, December 15th was our last storytime for the Fall Session. In anticipation of the holidays, we did stories and songs about toys. First everybody got a shaker egg and we sang our opening song “Clap Everybody and Say Hello.” We did the tickle Hurry Scurry Little Mouse and then read the […]
Mother Daughter Book Club: The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond
Published on :I want to share one activity we did at Wednesday night’s Mother Daughter Book Club meeting that is worth remembering and thinking about some more. This month, we read the book The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond by Brenda Woods. In my opinion, the character who grows the most in this […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: What’s your TRUE name?
Published on :To help kids brainstorm for our Young Readers’ League writing contest, we did writing exercises from the book Leap Write In! by Karen Benke, writing poem sentences and answering writing prompts about what our name means or what an ideal name would be for us. Here is what the kids came […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: Flipping Out Over Alliteration
Published on :In today’s Creative Writing for Beginning Readers workshop, we created funny flip books with very random, strange characters whose traits were based on silly alliterations. We learned that alliteration means that all of the words in a sentence or phrase begin with the same letter sound. So we had animals like […]