In the spirit of the Teen Read Week theme, “Turn Dreams into Reality,” our September writing exploration focused on blurring dreams and reality. Warm up Each teen writer started with a prompt from the Amazing Story Generator. A flipbook that randomly combine three elements to generate story ideas of all types. It […]
Time Machine — writing workshop
Published on :This month’s inspiration is the upcoming Doctor Who party… Time Machine Warmup Listing Read the Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; we read only the second paragraph In the same fashion, pick a place and time. This could be a classroom, field, hospital, store, airport, subway station, etc. Then list […]
What’s Your Superpower? — writing workshop and conversation with Author Amy Tintera
Published on :Our focus for June was SUPERPOWERS! We had a short writing exercise followed by a conversation with special guests author Amy Tintera and writer Kimberly Cooper, who answered writing and publishing questions posed by the teens. Writing prompt We started out with brainstorming on various superpowers. There are usual superpowers […]
Slam! Contact! Get out! — Flash Fiction Workshop
Published on :Today, the we worked on flash fiction–the shortest of the short story forms. Flash fiction is simply a term used for very short fiction; this could be less than 100 words, or 1000 words. There is no formal definition of a maximum word count, however, it is generally understood as […]
Teen Resume Workshop
Published on :Librarians Jane Gov and AnnMarie Hurtado talked about how to write your resume and write good cover letters. We took a look at the teens’ resumes and were very impressed with the experience these teens have already gotten! Use that experience to get a job–it’s not hard, just talk about […]
Found Poetry – teens write!
Published on :Our March creative writing workshop was dedicated to blackout and found poetry. Blackout poetry is the poetic form of taking an existing text and blacking out words and lines to leave a new poem… The act of redacting or recomposing the original text by presenting the remaining non-blackened text as […]
The Fault in Our Stars
Published on :What’s hot in YA right now? This is probably old news, but since its publication in 2012, The Fault in Our Stars has been getting some serious hype. John Green gains status as a household name, and our title request list continues to climb–at one point, at the height of […]
Steampunk Books
Published on :Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that incorporates the new with the old—the ‘old’ typically being set in Victorian London (or a similar place) with the old dresses, top hats, and those prim manners… And the ‘new’ being those futuristic inventions such as technology or objects with clockwork gadgets […]
Guide for Getting into College
Published on :Although the school year has just begun, it’s really not too early for you high school juniors and seniors to start thinking about college entrance exams and applications. Many colleges have priority deadlines coming up, and the official deadline to apply for a UC is November 30. Fortunately, the library […]
5 Great Tools for Editing Your Videos
Published on :You’ve created a video. Now what? Polish it before publishing it! Try some of these free online tools. They’re creative, easy to use, and free! Pixorial Make your home movies into digital films. Allows you to share and edit online. Great for longer videos. http://www.pixorial.com/ Flixmaster Cloud-based video editor that […]