Posts from Grand Central Library

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. You can also create your own and share them with us in the comments! See below for some interesting staff picks from the past month, on topics both timely and timeless:

People are predicting all kinds of crazy things regarding the year 2012, including, of course, the end of the world. Someone I respect told me that a lot of this issue is tied to the Mayan calendar and tradition. He suggested a better way of looking at 2012 would be as a year of change — a shift of epochs, or as a world turning in a new direction— not the actual end of the world, but a new beginning instead.

In that same spirit... something new at Teen Central is our Online Art & Talent Show, featuring a few of our amazingly talented artists and talented talents from 2012!

A podcast is an audio program anyone can make, post to a website, and make available for download onto a computer or portable device, such as an iPod (hence the term “podcast”). Listeners can subscribe to a podcast and get future episodes downloaded automatically as they become available. You probably already subscribe to podcasts of various kinds, but have you ever considered making your own?

Every November, thousands of aspiring authors and literary daredevils from around the world attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short.)

The New York Public Library is hosting NaNoWriMo Write-ins all over the city, creating an opportunity for you to meet other participants, work on your novel, and be cheered on to the lexical finish line. Some do it for the digital certificate and sense of achievement, while other NaNoWrimo novelists eventually go on to have their works published. Why you write, what you write, and how you write it, is all up to you!

From drug addiction to suicide, from abuse to striving for perfection, Ellen Hopkins is not afraid of writing about the dangers that all too frequently affect the lives of today’s teenagers. Her thick novels, told using free-verse poetry, have seen Hopkins win awards, rise to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and become one of the most popular authors of young-adult fiction. TeenLIVE is honored to be bringing Ellen Hopkins to Grand Central Library on Wednesday, September 28 at 4:30 p.m.

Teen Central at Grand Central Library, located at 135 West 46th Street, presents two special programs this summer.

Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. These are our responses:

I went to the Library nearly every day after school growing up. Without the Library, I wouldn’t be where I am today — a college graduate and one of the first members of my family to go to college.

Hi - The Writers' Club is assembling a newspaper/newsletter that we will distribute as widely as we can in the Grand Central Library and places where teens are.  We hope to have this project completed in the next few weeks and we plan to ask for writing contributions, opinions and feedback from teens throughout the city.  So look out for Teen Voices from Grand Central. In the meantime we have a few more and more colorful Haikus for you to digest along with a special photographic thanks to Crystal Odame in all colors.

A Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that has become popular in the U.S. In English Haikus are generally three line poems that have five syllables in the first verse, seven in the second and five in the third—we generally stuck to this form although since it's poetry, we allowed for some poetic license. In January and February as we negotiated our way around what seemed like non-stop snow, members of the Writers Club, inspired by cool scenes of the winter photography of Crystal Odame and the summer hot artwork of Romare Bearden, wrote some Haikus of many sorts and there are more on the Manga wall in Teen Central.

We are all moved by the horrific disasters, natural and man-made, that have occurred in Japan.  When we met on March 17th a cataclysmic nuclear meltdown seemed quite possible and maybe imminent.  It was non-stop on the news, in our minds and conversations.  Many of the people who come to Teen Central on a regular basis are Manga fanatics and they have strong feelings about Japan and the dynamic impact its' culture has on their lives.  Even those of us who are not that into Manga realize that Japan, though physically far away, is closely linked every day to our economy and society.

You may have noticed while browsing the collection at your local branch that it seems like we’ve been making a lot of shelving mistakes lately. On the back of most books you will notice a sticker with the name of the branch it originally came from, but you're probably seeing the names of branches other than the one you’re standing in. As of April 2010, the library quietly made a fundamental change to our branch collections. In the past, when a user checked out a book “owned” by the Epiphany branch but returned it at Seward Park, our shipping system would send the book back to Epiphany. Now, with the advent of what is known as floating 

Writers' Club educator, mentor, writer and friend Lois Stavsky is curating an art exhibition at the Bronfman Center at NYU called Something’s Missing: Visions and Voices of Loss. Given the recent catastrophes in Japan and other places in the world, this event seems quite timely. At our March 9th meeting club writers focused on the theme of loss and who knows—some of our work may find a way into the show. Lois has shared, as a preview, two pieces of art that will appear in the exhibit. In between is a taste of what the Writers' Club produced when considering voicing visions of loss.

The Grand Central Library is pleased to present From Sketchbooks and Black Books, an exhibit of over 100 images from a diverse group of artists.  

Ranging from pencil and ink sketches to vibrant graffiti pieces, the works on exhibit provide an intimate glimpse into the creative process. While a few of the images were created as preliminary sketches for larger works, most are personal visual explorations. And although most images reflect an internal dialog, some—particularly the graffiti-inspired pieces—were created to be shared by others.

A special welcome to Lenny Collado one of our newer members and someone who is helping out a lot.  Lenny brought this poem to our April 29th meeting and shared it with us.  Can you guess the word he's referring to?

As winter kicks in, Teen Central and Grand Central's second Writers' Club newsletter is now available (PDF).  We decided to feature a poem written by Crystal Gomez at the November 26th meeting of the writers' club. She wrote this in response to M.C. K~Swift's exercise on "personification." (Personificaton could be defined as giving human qualities and/or making come alive objects that are not human or often not alive.) -- Crystal's personification pairs included: a lost cell phone; trusting games; joyful paper; a funny building and of course....

On Wednesday, November 10th, Teen Central's newly formed Writers' Club held its first meeting in Grand Central Library's second floor Community Room.

Hip-Hop artist and educator M.C. K~Swift introduced himself and then shared writings from his journal with the other members of the Writers' Club.

It's hard to believe that the LiveStories memoir writing workshop at the Grand Central Library is nearing its conclusion.  This has been a fascinating, emotional, cathartic, and educational journey for us all.  With the help of our two wonderful teaching artists, Annie and Lauren, and our generous funders at Lifetime Arts,  we have learned how to craft our personal stories, and in some cases, even to dramatize them. We have made new friends and, in just a short time, become part of each other's lives.