This year’s One City One Story book, Orphan Train, is an adult book that centers around vivid, heartbreaking memories, so this year’s Short Story Writing Contest has a simple prompt: Write about a vivid memory. It can be from your past, or it can be an exploration of memories in […]
Creative Writing For Beginning Readers: Escaped Fairytale Characters
Published on :Last week on February 9th, kids ages 5-8 came to the library to do some fun creative writing. First we learned about the difference between “First Person” point of view, with lots of I, Me, My, We, Our, Us words, and Third Person point of view, with lots of He, She, […]
Lucha Libros: Big Nate in a Class By Himself
Published on :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 […]
Meeting Liesl Shurtliff, author of Rump
Published on :On Tuesday, November 17, Pasadena Public Library celebrated this year’s Young Readers League selection, Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (Knopf) by Liesl Shurtliff. In partnership with Vroman’s Bookstore, Young Readers League is designed as a community-wide reading celebration by championing and geeking out over a single book. PPL and Vroman’s […]
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 […]