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PITTSTON — Noelle Kozak enjoys things like “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings.” She describes herself as a teenager at heart.
Because of her love and enjoyment of these franchises and others, Kozak decided to create a new club at the Pittston Memorial Library for people with similar infatuations. Thus, the Fangirls Fan Club began in October.
“Me and my friends, we’re all in our 20s, but we still act like a bunch of teenagers sometimes,” Kozak said. “I am a total self-professed nerd, so the idea of helping people embrace their inner nerd was really appealing to me.”
The Fangirls Fan Club is for teenagers age 12 to 18 and for groups that 16-year-old Hannah Seyer calls “fandoms.”
“You’re in a thing called a fandom, which is where everybody in that particular group all has the same taste in something,” said Seyer, of Pittston.
Despite the name “fangirls,” the group is for both boys and girls, as “fangirl” is just an expression used to denote one is excited about something with which they are familiar.
As the library’s Teen Programming coordinator, Kozak is in charge of other teen-related groups such as Teen Reading Lounge (TRL) and Teen Advisory Group (TAG), and said she first consulted with the teenagers involved in other groups about creating the Fangirls Fan Club.
“I brought it to them first and they were really excited about it,” she said. “It’s all about congregating with people who like the same things you do and ‘nerding out’ about it. You can be with other people who are in these different kinds of fandoms and, even if they don’t like the same thing you do, they can relate to the passion that you have about it.”
Wyoming resident Kara Boub, 14, went to the library to join another teen group, but immediately jumped on the chance to join the Fangirls Fan Club.
“First, I visited the library to join TRL and then I heard of this,” Boub said. “The rest is history.”
The club meets at 5:30 p.m. the third Thursday of every month at the library and has eight teenagers involved. Activities so far have ranged from printing pictures off the website Tumblr and having the club members create their own stories.
Recently, Kozak had club members cut and paste sentences from old library books to glue onto shoes.
Boub and Seyer cut various sentences from their favorite books that spoke specifically to them, whether it was on a deep emotional level or something they found humorous.
Ideas for activities, Kozak said, come from the Internet or from her.
“I get some of my ideas off Pinterest,” she said. “Usually, if I see something cool that I think I might want to try, I kind of think maybe the teens would like to try this out for themselves.”
While the club is still new, Seyer calls it a great way for teens within specific fandoms to gather and be creative.
“It’s a very open atmosphere and it’s something safe,” she said. “I’m looking forward to more fun ideas and more activities.”
“The teenagers really inspire me to think outside of the box, too,” Kozak said. “Nothing is too crazy and they’re very open. They’re so welcoming that I thought a lot of them already knew each other beforehand.”
