Hello friends! My kids are back in their NYC school for the first time in 18 months (!!!), and I'm all nerves. But, rather than sit here, fret, and doom scroll, I thought today would be a good time to reach out with some behind-the-scenes news from Kazoo:
September Update:
Summer flew by! Now it's back to school, which is exciting and nerve-racking any year. This year x 100. I hope our kids will be OK. I hope we parents will be OK, too.Are we OK?
After a year of screen-school, our kids miraculously still love to read! The Tiny Editor, now 10, devoured theEmmie & Friends books this summer. The Teeny Editor, now 6, has started readingKazoofave Ivy & Beansolo. Highly recommend. (You might remember illustrator Sophie Blackall playing dress-up witha sweet potato named Philip in issue #17 and author Annie Barrows in our Storytellers' Issue #18.)
Every week, I make pizza, and we have "Friday Night Movie Night." At some point this summer, I realized I had memorized this NYTrecipe for pizza dough, which felt like an accomplishment. It's good. We try to agree on a new movie (but we've also somehow watchedThe Greatest Showmanat least 5x). If you have faves, send them our way.
To pass the time on a long car drive, we gave the girls an old-timey handheldcassette recorder, so they could document the trip. They spent much of it taping each other saying "HELLOOO" and laughing. They thought it was magic (so we explained we were witches, just as they had suspected).
We made DIY wooden drums from issue 22 and banged out "Eye of the Tiger" (to our neighbors' delight). We also loved searching #drummergirl on instagram and finding so many amazing girl drummers to inspire us!
We don't let our kids tik the tok (yet) but we do show them funny ones like this v clever little girl and her v understanding father.
We planted another garden! Still beginners but we all love to dig in the dirt. We mostly grew cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, and squash, which turned out to be mostly just blossoms. Our documentarian daughter explains:
Our one tiny squash plant took over the entire garden! And yet...
The Wild Issueis out now. If you subscribe, we hope you've gotten it and are loving it. (International subscribers, if you haven't received it yet, hang tight! Mail is slower than usual these days). If you're not sure about your subscription, you can check your status righthere.
That's the news for now. I successfully spent this first day of school *totally not worrying* and I hope you did too. (o_0) I'm hard at work on our next issue, but I'll try to write a short newsletter every month to stay in touch. If you'd like to reach out, or send me anything cool to include, you can find me: erin [at] kazoomagazine [dot] com.