Star power: Philly's Free Library has created a teen program that would make Oprah envious.

NOT MANY KIDS EXPECT TO FIND JERRY SPINELLI, Alice Walker, or Chris Crutcher waiting to talk to them about their works. But that's exactly what teens in the Free Library of Philadelphia's star-powered reading program have come to expect.

The Field Family Teen Author Series has connected kids to a Who's Who list of American writers, most recently David Macaulay, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tanya Maria Barrientos. What advice did they offer? Spinelli encouraged students to write what they care about. Walker spoke about finding one's place in the world. And Barrientos, whose novel Frontera Street was initially rejected by countless publishers, talked about the power of persistence. Other authors, such as astronaut Scott Carpenter, Holocaust survivor Bernard Gotfryd, and Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, gave kids a first-hand account of history. Basically, the authors discuss their most popular works, take questions, …