Green Route Canceled

The Green Mobile Library route is canceled for December 21.  We apologize for any inconvenience. 

Winter Holiday Schedule

All Library branches will be closed on the following days for the Winter Holiday:

Tuesday, December 24th

Wednesday, December 25th

Thursday, December 26th

Tuesday, December 31st

Wednesday, January 1st

Mr. & Mrs. F.L. Schlagle & Turner Library will also be closed on:

Monday, December 23rd

Friday, December 27th

Monday, December 30th

Teens

Green "Teens" banner with people icon in corner

KCKPL Teen Services

Teen Services offers a variety of resources for youth aged 13-18, including programs, academic help, volunteer opportunities, and recommended books. Interested? Click on a link, send an email, stop by a branch, or give us a call.

Teen Volunteering Opportunities

Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

Architecture, Portraits, and Wildlife by Smitha George

All Day 11/29 - 12/23
Children, Teens, Adults
South Branch Library
Library Branch: South Branch Library
Room: Art Gallery - South Branch Library
Age Group: Children, Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Exhibits
Event Details:

Smitha George is a self-taught artist with a love for wildlife and nature. The majority of her childhood was spent traveling, which helped her understand different cultures.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

exploring creativity by Garol

All Day 11/30 - 12/23
Children, Teens, Adults
West Wyandotte Library
Library Branch: West Wyandotte Library
Room: Art Gallery - West Wyandotte Library
Age Group: Children, Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Exhibits
Event Details:

Garol's colorful abstract expressionist paintings will be on display at West Wyandotte Library through the end of December.  Learn more about the artist at artbygarol.com.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.

Library Mini Golf: Holiday Edition

1:00pm - 5:00pm
Children, Teens
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Children's Department - Main Library
Age Group: Children, Teens
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Cultural, Holiday
Event Details:

Fans of our summer mini golf course and newbies alike can join us in the Youth Services department for some winter holiday fun! There will be five holes, each with a different holiday theme. It's a hole lotta fun for kids and teens!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.

Family Gift Wrapping

2:00pm - 4:00pm
Children, Teens
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Craft Room - Main Library
Age Group: Children, Teens
Program Type: Crafts & Hobbies, Holiday, Entertainment & Culture
Event Details:

Do you have some gifts that need to be wrapped with a personal touch? Children and their families are invited to the Main Library to decorate their own wrapping paper, use our wrapping paper, or just make gift tags!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.

Library Mini Golf: Holiday Edition

9:00am - 4:30pm
Children, Teens
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Children's Department - Main Library
Age Group: Children, Teens
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Cultural, Holiday
Event Details:

Fans of our summer mini golf course and newbies alike can join us in the Youth Services department for some winter holiday fun! There will be five holes, each with a different holiday theme. It's a hole lotta fun for kids and teens!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

Block of the Month Sewing Studio

6:30pm - 8:30pm
Teens, Adults
Main Library
Cancelled
Registration
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: 1st Floor Program Room - Main Library
Age Group: Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Crafts & Hobbies
Event Details:

Join us Monday evenings as we work on the Ultimate Beginner Quilt. Learn a new block pattern each week or bring your own projects to work on. No experience needed and supplies are provided.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

Architecture, Portraits, and Wildlife by Smitha George

All Day 12/27 - 12/30
Children, Teens, Adults
South Branch Library
Library Branch: South Branch Library
Room: Art Gallery - South Branch Library
Age Group: Children, Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Exhibits
Event Details:

Smitha George is a self-taught artist with a love for wildlife and nature. The majority of her childhood was spent traveling, which helped her understand different cultures.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

exploring creativity by Garol

All Day 12/27 - 12/30
Children, Teens, Adults
West Wyandotte Library
Library Branch: West Wyandotte Library
Room: Art Gallery - West Wyandotte Library
Age Group: Children, Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Exhibits
Event Details:

Garol's colorful abstract expressionist paintings will be on display at West Wyandotte Library through the end of December.  Learn more about the artist at artbygarol.com.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.
This event is in the "Teens" group.

Library Mini Golf: Holiday Edition

9:00am - 5:00pm
Children, Teens
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Children's Department - Main Library
Age Group: Children, Teens
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Cultural, Holiday
Event Details:

Fans of our summer mini golf course and newbies alike can join us in the Youth Services department for some winter holiday fun! There will be five holes, each with a different holiday theme. It's a hole lotta fun for kids and teens!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

Resources for Teens

Bloom's Literature

Bloom's Literature logo

Bloom’s Literature offers a comprehensive resource for the study of literature.

View Resource

Britannica Moderna

Britannica Moderna logo

Older students can turn to Britannica Moderna, with more than 47,000 articles plus about 8,000 images.

View Resource

Driver's Permit Tests

DMV Permit Test logo

Prepare with these Kansas DMV practice tests.

View Resource

Explora High School

Explora High School logo

High School students can look up articles and facts for research papers, class projects, or homework from the world’s leading magazines and reference books.

View Resource

Explora Middle School

Explora Middle School logo

Middle School students can look up articles and facts for research papers, class projects, or homework from the world’s leading magazines and reference books.

View Resource

History Reference Center

History Reference Center logo

Comprehensive history reference database offering full text from more than 1,600 reference books, encyclopedias, non-fiction books, and leading history periodicals.

View Resource

Issues & Controversies

Issues & Controversies logo

Helps students and researchers understand today’s crucial issues by exploring hundreds of hot topics in politics, government, business, society, education, and popular culture.

View Resource

Learning Express

Learning Express logo

Comprehensive test preparation, skills improvement resources, and career guidance for elementary students to adult learners.

View Resource

Literary Reference Center

Literary Reference Center logo

Includes thousands of plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews; articles of literary criticism; author biographies; literary journals; book reviews; classic and contemporary poems and short stories.

View Resource

Novelist K-8

Novelist K-8 logo

Reading recommendation resource for school grades K-8.

View Resource

Novelist Plus

Novelist Plus logo

Reading recommendation resource for all ages.

View Resource

Read It!

ReadIT logo

Read It! is designed for middle and high school students and adults who have a basic foundation in English grammar and reading but need adapted reading material for a variety of subjects.

View Resource

Tutor.com

Tutor.com logo

Provides live homework help and in-person tutoring services that connect students to a professional tutor online in math, science, social studies or English.

View Resource

Teen Books

Image for "Long Way Down"

Long Way Down

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Image for "All American Boys"

All American Boys

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.

In this Coretta Scott King Honor Award–winning novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviews tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken from the headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Image for "When the Angels Left the Old Country"

When the Angels Left the Old Country

Stonewall Book Award Winner

Sydney Taylor Award Winner

Michael L. Printz Honor Book

National Jewish Book Award Finalist

AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

BEST OF THE YEAR

NPR · New York Public Library · Kirkus

For fans of "Good Omens"--a queer immigrant fairytale about individual purpose, the fluid nature of identity, and the power of love to change and endure.

Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn''t have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they''ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.

P R A I S E

★ "Powerfully moving. Broad in scope, the strong queer relationships at its core provide an unfaltering anchor."

--Publishers Weekly (starred)

★ "Immersive...Propulsive. A mashup of historical fiction and magical realism, this will find a satisfied audience in fans of both."

--BCCB (starred)

★ "Extraordinary....Absorbing. A sublime novel about the fantastical, freeing nature of love."

--Foreword Reviews (starred)

★ "Gorgeous, fascinating, and fun. Deftly tackles questions of identity, good and evil, obligation, and the many forms love can take."

--Kirkus (starred)

★ "Terrific. Richly imagined and plotted, this inspired book has the timeless feeling of Jewish folklore."

--Booklist (starred)

★ "Expansive queer tale that marries historical fiction with inventive world-building. Witty, cerebral storytelling."

--Horn Book (starred)

"A must-buy for any collection, Lamb''s historical fiction novel brings soft queer joy to a compelling tale of immigrants and unions and Jewish folklore."

--School Library Journal (starred)

"Liars, lovers, grifters, a good angel and a wicked one--all held together with the bright red thread of unexpected romance, enduring friendship and America''s history. You don''t have to be Jewish to love Sacha Lamb--you only have to read."

--New York Times Bestseller Amy Bloom

"I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!!!! I read it in two days and then I spent the next two weeks thinking about it. Literally forgot to take my lunch break at work because I was busy thinking about it. This book is SO fun and funny and beautiful. Inherently, inextricably deeply queer-and-Jewish in a way that makes my brain buzz. I am obsessed."

--Piera Varela, Porter Square Books

"I love this book more than I can say (but I''ll try!) I was delighted by the wry narrative voice of this book from the first paragraph. The author perfectly captures the voice of a Jewish folk tale within an impeccably researched early 20th century setting that includes Yiddish, striking factory workers, and revolutionary coffee houses. It gave me so many feelings about identity, love, and their obligations to the world, themselves, and each other. This story will forever have a place in my heart and in my canon of favorite books. I can''t wait to have it on my shelves!"

--Marianne Wald, East City Bookshop

"A beautiful story of an angel and demon set on helping an emigrant from their shtetl, and the fierce girl that joins them on the way... A must read for all ages--one filled to the brim with heart."

--Mo Huffman, Changing Hands Bookstore