Lisa Yee's Blog: Beach or Books . . . 12 Teens Decide

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Beach or Books . . . 12 Teens Decide

It was a gorgeous sunny Southern California day on Tuesday. The kind of day where locals and visitors flock to the beach . . .

(Above: Visiting authors Julia DeVillers and Jay Asher first met in Santa Monica and played in sand with their shoes on. CLICK HERE to find out when.)

However, there was a super select group of teens who came here instead . . .

That's right! They came to the Santa Monica Public Library. Why? Well, we'll get to that. But first, you need to know that Peepy and I were also at the library on that day . . .

We've been to the Santa Monica Library before and one time we even hung out with Henry Winkler here . . .

On this visit, of course, we gravitated toward our favorite area . . .

We had heard there were some talented teen writers in the building, so we went in search of them . . .

Then we wandered into this totally cool room hoping they'd appear . . .

And they did!

Why? Because there was cake?

Yes! It was Ann Wagner Youth Librarian's birthday week (!!!). However, they were also here to take part in Write On! A Teen Writer's Workshop.

Guess who was the guest workshop leader? Yes, again! (Man you're good at guessing.) It was me. The topic was POV, as in "point of view."

So I put the kids to work . . .

Of course, while they were writing, Peepy was goofing off and even took a short nap . . .

I was so impressed by the teens' writing and the insights.

Then again, these are extraordinary young adults. Ones who are taking two afternoons a week of their summer vacations to learn how to be better writers. How's that for dedicated!

And here's a special treat. An Oscar-quality documentary. Um, I was going to post a feature-length video of people writing, but it probably would have been too breathtaking for you to watch and you wouldn't be able to get it out of your mind and it would cause you to think about it all day and nothing would get done. So, here's the mini-version . . .

Disclaimer: No proofreaders were harmed (or even used) in the creation of this blog.