Author Helps Kick Off Writing Program

As the youngest of eight children, Mary Helen Ponce would often lock herself in the bathroom or climb trees in search of a quiet place to read. Lacking paper and pencils, she used sticks to scratch her first stories in the soft dirt around her family’s Pacoima home.

On Wednesday, Ponce, the author of “Hoyt Street,” which describes her childhood experiences in 1950s Pacoima, and four other books, brought her enthusiasm for literacy to the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center.

Over the next year, Ponce will work with teachers and parents on a new creative writing program at Vaughn.

“I never knew I could be a writer, but as I got older I developed a love for books,” Ponce told 1,200 students at the kindergarten through fifth-grade school Wednesday. “I never knew that words and books could make a difference, but now I know they can.”

Ponce’s appearance at Vaughn on Wednesday marked the kickoff of a yearlong program in which parents will be encouraged to work with their children on family-based storybooks.

The stories will be compiled in a volume to be unveiled at a writers’ festival at the end of the year, said Matt Oppenheim, coordinator of Vaughn’s Parent Academy.