Read All About It
This brightly-coloured publication about making mini-magazines is aimed at children from six upwards, and comes from author and illustrator Kristyna Baczynski.
Anyone familiar with printing processes will recognise the neon colour palette as a reference to risograph printing; it forms a clean, bright background for your young-person’s creativity. With a cute mix of collage-able characters and zine templates, what better way to introduce the idea of magazine-making?
Beginning with tips and tricks about how to assemble the 10 themed zines, what materials you’ll need, and how to create fancy lettering, it also breaks down the anatomy of an eye-catching magazine cover. This, and some nifty folding techniques, meaning that it’s not limiting your small creator to the templates that are provided, instructing them on how to go forth after the pages are filled up, and continue to express their ideas.
Each mini-magazine is a template for a different interest or mood, from expressing likes and dislikes, what goes on in their dreams, or giving being an interviewer a go. There’s a zine for the animal lovers, and the food lovers, or haters!
A healthy mix of imagination-firing stuff, like a zine about a menagerie of monsters invites kids to make stuff up, but it also mixes things up with more research-based zine ideas, which introduce the idea of reviewing something, for example.
With the Easter holidays upon us, this is a sure-fire way to keep kids entertained and getting creative away from screens and gadgets. It’s simple enough that they can get stuck in on their own, and varied enough that it might push them outside of their comfort zone.
Illustrator and author: Kristyna Baczynski