Last Friday, kids came to Pasadena Central Library for a free writing workshop with middle grade author Kristen Kittscher, who writes the Young and Yang mysteries! She shared some of the funny facts that inspired her book The Tiara on the Terrace, which is based on Pasadena’s own Rose Court […]
Creative Writing with Ashlyn Anstee
Published on :We had another terrific creative writing class for ages 5-8 with author-illustrator Ashlyn Anstee, who created the books Are We There, Yeti? and No, No, Gnome! Kids had a great time making up a funny character with crazy attributes, and coming up with a problem for him and a solution, […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: The Erasmus Game
Published on :On Friday, Sept. 23 in our Kids’ Writing Workshop for children ages 8-12, we played something called “The Erasmus Game,” which I got to learn from PCC professor and YA author E. Katherine Kottaras. This exercise is based on Chapter 33 of the book Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style […]
Roald Dahl 100
Published on :We had 45 people come to our Roald Dahl 100 Celebration on Tuesday, September 13th, the centennial of Roald Dahl’s birth! Mr. Nick told us all about Dahl’s life and how his life sometimes inspired his fiction and his writing style. We did a quiz, a word search, and a […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with Tracy Holczer
Published on :On Friday, August 26, we had Tracy Holczer here at the Pasadena Public Library children’s story room to teach creative writing to kids aged 8-12. Tracy Holczer wrote the gorgeous middle grade novel The Secret Hum of a Daisy. We discussed lots of things: reading, how to write a good […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: The Wonderful World of Poems with Cassidy Kao
Published on :On August 9, 2016, a young self-published poet named Cassidy Kao, age 10, taught our Creative Writing for Beginning Readers class for kids between 5 and 8 years old. She explained four different kinds of poems to us and then the kids worked individually with their parents to write their […]
Bethany Barton Teaches Creative Writing
Published on :On Saturday, July 9, 2016, author-illustrator Bethany Barton taught a creative writing class for kids ages 5-8 at Pasadena Public Library. Her humor and fun infused the class and put the kids in a playful, creative zone. She read us one of her books and even brought some way-cool props, […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with Author Rachel Searles
Published on :Rachel Searles, author of MG science fiction novels The Lost Planet and its new sequel Stolen Moon, got the kids thinking creatively and having fun making the weirdest, scariest, funniest, most colorful alien character they could! First she shared her writing process with us. I love it when a successful […]
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 […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with author Elana Arnold
Published on :Sometimes I like to make a video mashup of clips from these workshops, especially now that we have a digital camera that will take both photo and video. So before I go into how amazing and fun and rewarding last week’s creative writing workshop with Elana K. Arnold was, why […]