PJH Studios

Tag: teenagers

  • Teens start banned book club

    After books were banned, what better way for teenagers to rebel than to start a banned book club?

    “It was really difficult for our first year,” Gooblar-Perovic added. “We couldn’t be like an official club with our school, because it would be, legally, iffy.”

    The group persisted. After the part of the law that affects school libraries was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, the Banned Book Club gained official recognition from the school. Now, as enforcement of the book restrictions remains frozen under a second temporary injunction, the club has 15 to 25 regular members and meets weekly to discuss books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451 — some of the same titles that had been previously removed from the Iowa City Community School District’s libraries. According to Iowa City West High’s library catalog, the books have since been reshelved.

  • A school in Kentucky banned phones. And the kids started talking to each other

    A school in Kentucky banned phones. Unsurprisingly, they interacted more, and surprisingly, library circulation went up.

    “There is definitely a different feeling,” Neuss said. “It’s hard to quantify something like that. But it’s noticeable when you talk with students, walk through the hallways and go into classes.”

    What is easier to quantify is the immediate impact of the ban on students’ use of the school library. In the first month of school this year, students took out 67 percent more books than the same month last year, with 533 books checked out in August 2024 and 891 books checked out in August 2025. That’s for a student body of 2,189.

  • Publishing newspapers at 15

    A group of teenagers are publishing their own weekly newspaper in Montauk, NY.

    Billy Stern, the paper’s 15-year-old top editor, kept tabs on their progress in a planning document on his laptop. According to his color-coding system, reporters had already filed articles about nearby summer camps and the construction of a new hospital on the grounds of a former baseball field.

    He turned to Teddy Rattray, 15, the paper’s most prolific columnist and Billy’s friend since Little League, to float ideas for a restaurant review.

    “We still haven’t done hot dogs,” Teddy said. Billy agreed: Hot dogs should be an editorial priority.

    The operation has grown slicker since the boys got into the news business last year, as eighth graders at East Hampton Middle School. Billy had been looking for a summer job that was more stimulating than his usual gig squeezing lemons at a food truck. He enlisted Teddy and Teddy’s cousin Ellis Rattray to put together an eight-page paper exploring Montauk from a teenager’s perspective.

  • Luddite teens

    It sounds like a hipster indie band, but Luddite Teenagers are meeting up to emphasize connections without the distraction of technology.

    “Our club promotes conscious consumption of technology,” she said. “We’re for human connection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in Philly.”

    She pulled out a flip phone, mystifying her recruit.

    “We use these,” she said. “This has been the most freeing experience of my life.”

  • Click: The Ultimate Photography Guide for Generation Now

    Charlie Styr published Click: The Ultimate Photography Guide for Generation Now using pictures from the Flickr Teenage Photography group. It’s aimed at the beginner or wanna-be-a-little-bit-cooler-by-by-taking-cool-pictures photographers. It’s balanced covering all the essential photography topics-exposure, aperture, shutter speed, light, composition, etc. It goes a little further with the example photos and includes camera settings. This comes in handy when wanting to figure out techniques specific to certain situations, such as macro, low-light, creating light trails or portraits.