Wouldn't you love to travel to faraway lands and experience the sights, tastes, and culture of a place totally different than your home? I know I would. While I save up for that trip around the world, I use the library to whet my apetite for travel adventures.

This month, I'm focusing on India in honor of this month's Indian holiday of Holi. Holi is known as the "festival of colors" and celebrates spring's new beginnings. People visit relatives and friends and work on relationships that may be having problems. Holi is a time of forgiveness and love. Holi revelers celebrate by throwing brightly colored powders and spraying colored water at each other in a friendly game of color play. The Color Run race that features similar color play was inspired partially by this Indian holiday.

This month, teens will get a chance to experience aspects of Holi for themselves at Anythink York Street. Members of the local Indian community will be attending Teen Time to share Holi with students in grades 6-12. Dancers will perform and delicious Indian foods will be available to sample. Following the presentations, teens will get to participate in good-natured color play with dry color powder outside.

Teens Celebrate Holi at Anythink York Street
Wednesday, March 25, 3:30-4:30 pm

Anythink York Street
8990 York Street, Suite A
Thornton, CO 80229

Sign up here: Teen Time: Holi Festival

Be sure to wear clothing you don't mind getting messy! While colors usually wash out, there is a chance of staining.

Until then, check out these great books by Indian authors:

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969.