This past Friday I was in New York. The city. Ask me if the brights are light. Go on? ... Well they are.

The YPulse Tween Mashup was held at the Jacob Javits Center. If you've never been there, it's this big, long building that houses, among many other things, the Book Expo America.

YPulse is this whole other web site out there in www land. It's also a finger on a pulse (the name is not accidental). It is dedicated to understanding what makes tweens tick. Cuz as it turns out... you're quite an interesting bunch. :)

Hosted by Anastasia Goodstein (YPulse's puppet-master and author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online), the event was a mix of old school practices and the wave of the future. There's a whole lot of both out there. You probably don't remember this, but there was a time long ago when there were no computers. There were no cell phones or emails. No iPods or earmuffs. Nah, I'm just kidding. The world has always had earmuffs.

Here's a question for you: Which do you prefer?
a) texting your friends
b) emailing your friends
c) talking on your cell
d) writing a letter in longhand scripture using a quill and ink before having to walk all around the house searching everywhere for an envelope and a stamp and then having to, after all that work, walk to the mail box or the post office and mail the thing

No! It's a serious question! Leave a comment below. Tell us a, b, c, or d... and tell us why.

But that's what the Mashup was all about. It was a bunch of old folks sitting around in a room, scratching their heads and saying, "Um. Does anyone understand tweens? ... Hello? ... lil' help?"

So have you ever heard the word "tween" before? Maybe sometime 'tween lunch and dinner? Well, it's nothing to be afraid of. It's not a label or a brand name. It's just a way of classifying. Like Gen X or horseshoe burns on a bull's... no, I kid. Here's what the Urban Dictionary has to say about it:

Tween: A word that is used by marketers to describe youths between the ages of 10-13. Although some believe that tweens are actually between the ages of 10-15. Despite the fact that tweens have always existed, marketers continue to lay claim to discovering them. ... No one discovered the tweens.

Ha! Right on. Embrace your 'tween-dom while you have it, friends.

So as a tween, what are your favorite web sites? Keep in mind, this is not a ploy. If you say, "WORD", you will not get a free tee shirt (although we will be flattered). Just curious is all. Tell you what though, if you write up just a few paragraphs about your favorite web site, we just might post your writing here. Put "favorite web site" in the subject line of an email and send it to word@weeklyreader.com. Make sure and tell us why you love it!

YPulse: It's a neat thing. In this day and age, we're all wired. The old and the young alike. We might as well have some dialogue about this cyberspace place... right?

What's up?

Later this week: More from the YPulse Tween Mashup...

Coming this week to a bloggy near you...

Coverage of the YPulse Tween Mashup in New York City

AND

Coverage of the National Book Festival in Washington, DC

Stay tuned...

Did you ever stop to wonder where certain words came from? (OK, probably not. You all have busy lives, I know.) But if you did stop to think about it, you might be surprised to learn that a lot of words are actually eponyms.

According to an article on CNN article on CNN, a lot of odd words were actually named after people. Like the word 'dunce' was named after John Duns Scotus. A lot of people thought the guy's scientific theories were pretty dumb. Soon anyone with a dumb theory was a 'dunseman.' Later, the word morphed into the word we know today.

That's pretty bad.

There are some people who have accomplished good things, and their names have become words. Take Gabriel Fahrenheit's name, for example. I mean, everyone likes knowing what the temperature is and all.

But if my name were to become an eponym, what would it mean? Would 'pulling a Jessica' mean succeeding while be kind, generous, and all-together awesome? (An example of usage: Wow, Mike got voted captain of the football team today. He  deserves it because he works really hard and lead his team to victory. He really pulled a Jessica.)

More than likely though, 'pulling a Jessica' will come to mean spilling soda on your keyboard and having to call the computer guys to get you a new one.

I don't think I like that one bit.

So, what other words do you know that are eponyms? If your name becomes an eponym, what will it mean?

In the premiere issue of READ this year, we asked you to write a conclusion to the story Bad Blood. The following is how Carly Arias envisioned it continuing...

Beyond Bad Blood
 - Carly Arias, Grade 8

"Maybe." I said. I looked down at the highway ahead of me. "Then again, maybe not."

Those were the last words that I said to my dad that day. Now, after two years of road tripping, I'm finally going back to that little town in Ohio. My corvette, still red and delicious, has been my one an only love.

Every night all I can think about is poor old Mrs. Anderson dying alone. As I'm driving down the road to the old house and its memories all I can do is tremble. Tremble with the fear of remembering things. Tremble with the fear of seeing her ghost. Tremble thinking, "Did she die because of me?"

As I drove past her house, to my surprise the lights were on. As I got out of the car quietly, I saw a vague image of a man standing near the window. I went around back, peeked in, and immediately dropped to the floor. I blanked out and saw what was like a "movie" in my head about Mrs. Anderson looking at her son, Gary's, picture. Then I awoke. As I looked in the window again... the man was still standing there. I squinted to see his face... it was Gary!

I ran and jumped into the car. Quickly locking the doors I thought, "Is it Gary's ghost coming back to haunt me, or was he never really dead?"

I turned the car on and backed out of the driveway. Down the road about two miles or so was a motel. I checked in, got my stuff and headed into the room. The second I stepped in the room I got a whiff of something. It was neither bad nor good. It was familiar. It smelled like Mrs. Anderson's house. That dusty colonial smell.

The next day I drove past the house again and saw the door and windows open. So, I parked my car a little down the street and walked to the house. I walked in and saw Gary. He sprinted towards me and knocked me on the floor. He started to scream. "You! You are the one who killed her!" Then he vanished.

I drove as fast as I could back to the motel. I ran into the room, locked the door, and hid under the covers. I eventually decided that I would have to face my fears. The next day, I went to the house one last time. When I saw Gary, I called out his name. He vanished and then appeared right behind me. I told him how I was sorry--how I never meant to hurt him or his mom. I decided to return the car to him. I handed him the keys just as a white light flashed... and he disappeared. This time for good.

My nightmares were over.

Authors are people. They have lives outside their novels. (Just like teachers have lives outside their classrooms. I didn't believe this when I was in elementary school, but now that some of my friends are teachers, I guess I have to accept this fact.) Sometimes, authors' lives are actually more interesting than what they write about. Take, for example, calculus text book writers. Joking.

According to an article on CNN, some famous authors had really bizarre lives, and deaths. For example, Sherwood Anderson, a famous short story writer, died from swallowing a toothpick that was hidden in an hors d'oeuvre.

O. Henry, the master of irony who wrote "The Gift of the Magi" and other short stories, was actually a criminal named William Sydney Porter. He was accused of embezzlement, and put in jail. Being in jail might have been the best thing that ever happened to him. This is where he came up with his pen name and started writing. (And no, I'm not going to say that this was ironic. That's lame, even for me! Ha, totally just went there anyway.)

It just goes to show--you can't judge a book by it's cover! (I know, I know, even I was groaning as I was typing that.)  What are some of your weird things that might get published about you after you're a famous author? Come on, we all have them. After all, you might all know me by my blogs, but you know nothing of what I do in real life. I could be a criminal, or collect used chewing gum, or insist on wearing the same shirt every day for luck, or have to tap the light switch three times before I can turn it on ...

Just kidding. I'm a perfectly normal blogger.

And anyway, who would wear the same shirt every day? That's just gross. Pants, on the other hand ...