The Hawthorne High School Creative Writing Club visited the New York Public Library on December 4, 2013. The students took a guided tour of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the Beaux-Arts landmark on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street that houses some 15 million items, among them priceless medieval manuscripts, ancient Japanese scrolls, contemporary novels and poetry, as well as baseball cards, dime novels, and comic books.
The museum docent brought the students through the most notable rooms in the three-story facility. They toured the Rose Main Reading Room (the size of two football fields), the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room (where even students from Hawthorne High School can obtain library cards), the McGraw Rotunda (where large wall murals depict the growth of writing in human civilization), and the specialized American and British Literature collections within rooms depicting representations of Charles Dickens’ and Percy Shelley’s writing rooms.
The students then were given a second guided tour of the current exhibit “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter.” This gave the young writers a view of what the library’s website calls “the extraordinary richness, artistry, and diversity of children’s literature across cultures and time.” Following the growth of children’s literature from the 1700s to present day, students saw exhibits for many of their favorite books including Where the Wild Things Are, Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, Secret Garden, and A Wrinkle in Time.
As a bonus, the students also viewed a new exhibit called “Play Things.” This exhibition explores the long and varied tradition of how works on paper not only participated in but actively facilitated conditions of playfulness. On view were works by such artists as John Baldessari, Sebastiaan Bremer, Marcel Duchamp, Eadweard Muybridge, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Liliana Porter, Alyson Shotz, and Clare Strand.
The day ended with a stop in Bryant Park for ice skating and holiday shopping.
The Creative Writing Club works throughout the school year to create and produce the high school’s literary magazine The Empyrean and it hosts various writing events and activities related to writing throughout the year.