Growing up, I loved comics, but it wasn’t until I discovered the graphic novel Maus by Art Spieglman, that I saw my culture and family heritage as a Jewish American in the pages of a comic. I have…
Cory Doctorow is a co-editor of Boing Boing (an award-winning zine, blog, and directory of mostly wonderful things), a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an MIT Media Lab…
Jacaranda season is almost here, that magical time of year when the spectacular purple blossoms come into sight and chase away May Gray and June Gloom. Like so many of the trees that make up the Los…
Friday is National Arbor Day: a day to celebrate trees. When we look around Los Angeles today with its beautiful tree-filled parks and palm-lined streets, it's hard to imagine it being any different…
When it comes to cats versus dogs, or birds, rabbits, and horses, what makes your pet special? Is it all your love and nurturing? Its abject cuteness and sass? What if you could receive a blessing for…
Scotto Moore is a Seattle playwright whose works include several speculative fiction themed plays. He is also the creator of the comedic web series called The Coffee Table about a couple that…
Billie Eilish is a new, upcoming artist raved about by many teens. Born and raised in Highland Park, California, Eilish always has been into music since she was very young. She was raised under a very…
William Willmore had a brilliant idea. He was going to create a farming community on the coast of Southern California. He bought 4,000 acres of Rancho Los Cerritos and subdivided the land into plots…
Brigid Kemmerer is the New York Times bestselling author of More Than We Can Tell, Letters to the Lost, and the Elementals series. She was born in Omaha, Nebraska, though her parents quickly moved her…
I grew up in a small affluent neighborhood north of downtown Los Angeles called Porter Ranch. In preschool I made my first friend; in elementary, I joined my first club; in second grade I moved to a…
Jazz is one of my favorite music genres. I've been a fan for almost twenty years. For me, it started with listening to my parent's old jazz records on vinyl when I was in high school. Eventually, I…
Cooked right, they’re warm and fluffy, with a glaze of buttery-syrupy goodness and a golden color to get anyone up and running to Denny’s at 2 a.m. Cooked wrong, well, waffles are still pretty…
Since 1872 the Los Angeles Public Library has been home to some very interesting librarians. This is the first of an occasional series highlighting these fascinating people, many of whom are little…
The hills of Los Angeles blossom in spring. This time of year can make traffic a bit more pleasant as the sun squeezes its lemon-yellow rays onto the mint colored hillsides of our metropolis. In the…
As the Los Angeles Public Library celebrates Women’s History Month, it’s appropriate to remember Tessa Kelso, sixth city librarian for Los Angeles (1889-1895). Kelso may not have been the first female…
Mallory O’Meara is a film producer and the co-host of the “Reading Glasses” podcast. She is also a lifelong fan of classic horror. In her debut as an author, O’Meara reveals the long and purposefully…
National Deaf History Month, which runs from March 13 to April 15, celebrates deaf history and promotes awareness of American deaf culture. The celebration spans two calendar months to include several…
“We’ll all grow up someday, Meg; we might as well know what we want.”—Louisa May Alcott, Little Women Visionary women have always been among us. Women have contributed to science, history, philosophy…
The Big Read this year is The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. A few of the themes running through this award-winning novel about an Ethiopian immigrant are displacement, cultural…
Chinatown in Los Angeles has been demeaned and misunderstood for about a century and a half. It has never been considered the equal of the much more famous entities in San Francisco or New York but it…
High school is a place where many teens, like myself, have felt like popularity outshines the importance of school. Teens often believe that high school is some type of hierarchy like the films, High…
I must confess I didn't really know that much about the history of Mardi Gras, but with a little bit of librarian research, I found out some interesting facts. Mardi Gras—which means Fat Tuesday in…
A picture may say 1,000 words, though there is possibly another story lurking just outside the frame. At first glance, these selections from the LAPL Photo Collection might appear to be a random…
A quiet, gentleman, he found his ‘voice’ in his designs. When others attempted to silence him with racism, he ‘spoke’ as others could not—for himself, and for his community. He also found his voice in…
