Chocolate Skulls & Pan de Muerto for Dia de los Muertos @ La Puente Library

Yesterday, the young adults of La Puente celebrated Dia de los Muertos with art activities such as chocolate skull painting, articulated skeleton decorating, and creating thematic frames (for which we took fun photos). The staff provided pan dulce, pan de muerto, tamales, mango horchata, and florentinas. The program ran 2 hours, and attracted 35 young adults. Two of these YAs won manga titles in our costume contest.

For Halloween Day, we read about Dia de los Muertos, then the teens assisted story time participants in frosting chocolate skulls of their own.

Teen Suggestions for Future Programs:

"Next year -- pumpkin decorating contest!" - Viridiana D., 8th grade
"Try to make the haunted house scarier." - Daniel D., 6th grade
"Hope we would bake a cake and decorate it..." - Paula V., 6th grade
"Do this again next year." - Maritza G., 12th grade

Top Chef for Young Adults, West Covina

We invited young adults to join our Top Chef program on Saturday, 8.4.07, presented by Chef Nate Allen, a Chef to the Stars (i.e., Tobey Maguire & Leo DiCaprio). Teens tasted delicacies and learned about careers in the culinary arts. We had thirteen attendees, four of whom were teens --- the rest were mostly parents trying to teach their teens that eating healthy can be cool.

Teen Read Week I

While the meeting room transforms into a haunted house, our young adult programs are held outdoors. The challenge is that younger siblings want to tag along when YAs assemble in front of the library. Tuesday, we offered a stamping art project table for the 13 kids a few yards away from the more mature decoupage project for the 13 teens. (Unfortunately, the alternative craft didn't quell the younger sibs!)

Suggestions for future

"More painting projects." - M. Lopez, 11th grade
"Keep making more fun projects." - R. Martinez, 12th grade
"I don't really have any ideas right now." - C. Santillan, 10th grade

Attached photographs are of the decoupage event and teens helping at story time last week.

Teen Karaoke, La Puente