Ayun Halliday has a guest column at Moorish Girl about creating zines that is a quick and intersting read. I was impressed a few weeks ago by a book that showed up in my mailbox from Houghton Mifflin - Whatcha Mean, What's a Zine? that is sort of a how-to guide for creative young adults. (There's a good description at the publisher's site.) And all of this also comes to mind right now because I'm in the midst of working up a review for Stories That Care Forgot, a collection of New Orleans zines that was put out to show a completely unique side of the city that has been utterly and completely lost in the months since Katrina.
It's really an amazing little book and I look forward to getting the review done and out there for the rest of the world.
I've never done a zine but I find them tremendously compelling. Halliday is right - blogs will not live forever like pen and paper just as ebooks will not survive like a "real" book can. Zines are so personal, not only due to content but design, and they really offer a most intimate connection with the creators. And there is something out there for every reader - guaranteed. Halliday has some links for futher reading in her column and I would also encourage anyone who knows of a teen interested in the zine world to pick up the HMCO book. You might spark someone's creativity in a whole new way and with a long summer stretching before us, teens could do a lot worse then tell the world what they think.
Heck, that's something we all should be doing more of.
