A group of Palmerton teens put their love of reading and love of art together to spice up the stairway to the teen book room.

The plan was in action on Thursday as seven of the 11 youths clamored on the stairwell, asked for more paint, added thumbprint signatures to their work and laughed at silly noises.Group member Zoey Kiefer announced, "I have paint on my foot."Tessa Gattullo, Palmerton Area Library cataloger and teen group adviser, told her to go wash it off, and then went back to talking about the whole project.Gattullo said she was looking for something for the kids to do over the summer and she wanted to draw attention to the teen room, adding that it's more than a book sale down there; it's a whole room full of teen genre books.The room includes the entire Harry Potter series, Twilight series, Warrior books, Mortal Instrument series and much more.Gattullo decided to build on a project some teens completed a few years ago. That group painted a mural on a couple of brick walls intersecting at a corner. It's visible from the stairs. She thought it would be nice to take the mural idea up the stairwell, so Gattullo presented the suggestion to her group. The ideas started flowing.After brainstorming, they decided to build on the design idea of Ella Cronk, 13."Originally, it was going to be a bunch of symbols from the books and names of books in the room," Gattullo said. "The symbols and words were going to flow out of the head of the reader," but the design evolved into the reader being a mermaid and the ideas flowing out onto an ocean of water.During the summer, the mermaid was being worked on by Cronk, Senia Smith and Erica Messics, but now the three girls haven't been able to come due to playing on the volleyball team or marching band, Gattullo said.Katelyn Hoffman, 16, stepped in to help get the main lady finished.She said she heard about the project and wanted to help.Hoffman has experience with drawing and painting pictures on a wall. Her art is on her bedroom wall."I love to draw and paint," she said. "To come out here and public paint is really cool."Hoffman wasn't the only newcomer to the group, Gattullo said. Once the painting began, more kids wanted to join. Some haven't hit the double digits yet, but she just couldn't turn them down."Lots of people started coming because we are doing this," she said. "It became easier just to let people in. It's been fun."Some of the other muralists are: Ashley Kiefer, 12, and her sister is 9-year-old Zoey; Katelyn's siblings Matt Hoffman, 15, and Emily Hoffman, 12; Valerie Solt, 11; and Alexia Roseberry, 11.Art teacher Paula Zelienka provided lots of guidance. She teaches at St. John Neumann Regional School in Palmerton and instructs art classes at the library.Two friends who finish each other's sentences, Roseberry and Ashley Kiefer talked all about the pictures and symbols on the wall."When you go down there, there are cats from the Warrior series, a dog and a bear," Roseberry said."She did the dog, and I did the bear," Kiefer said. "They're all from the same author."The mural also includes a lightning bolt, ribbon and hourglass from Harry Potter, and a unicorn will be there, too, the girls said."We are not as done as I thought we would be," Gattullo said, "Every time I think we're close to getting done, someone adds something."The final touches will include making waves in the water and cleaning up some dripped paint or turning them into water droplets. Gattullo hopes it's all done by Halloween."There are lots of fun activities that they let us do," Ashley Kiefer said."What is most fun, in my opinion is everybody sticking up for each other," Roseberry said, noting that she experienced that peer support at the bingo party."I think that was really awesome. I loved it."