On the covers of Illustoria magazine, glow-in-the-dark sea monsters radiate off the page, dogs stand on their heads, toads play trumpets, and a chorus of mythical creatures marches on. The pages encourage you to draw all over them; their subjects spur just as much creativity as they emit. Each page is filled with colorful illustrations and jam-packed with artist interviews and wacky DIY activities, from mazes and fill-in-the-blanks to history lessons and innovative writing prompts.
Founded in 2016 by Joanne Meiyi Chan, the magazine is specifically targeted toward kids ages 6 to 12 but without the gimmicks or impermanence of many of its competitors. Instead, it’s the kind of magazine that literary adults would be proud to share with their kids or grandkids, shelving it alongside an issue of Alta Journal or perhaps the Believer—Illustoria and the Believer share a publisher, McSweeney’s.
Illustoria fits neatly into the McSweeney’s universe. The inventive publishing company, founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers, the author of this month’s California Book Club selection, The Every, has numerous novels under its umbrella. It acquired Illustoria from Chan in 2019. Now, a mighty team of three Illustoria staff plus McSweeney’s publisher and executive director Amanda Uhle produce the fun, funky magazine quarterly for elementary-age children and the adults who can keep up with them. The core purpose of the magazine—echoing that of the Eggers-founded nonprofit 826 Valencia—is to spark the imaginations of children while operating, as Uhle says, with “a baseline deep respect for young readers and an understanding of their sophistication.”
A tangible print magazine for children makes sense in a world overrun with screens, explain Uhle and Claire Astrow, the editorial and marketing manager of Illustoria. Parents are increasingly looking for physical objects with which to entertain their kids when the iPads are off, and the magazine format invites kids and parents to interact and learn together, both peering over the wide pages.
Illustoria’s partnership with the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers allows young writers to put their words on the magazines’ pages as well. The latter entity uses its relationships with children’s writing organizations worldwide to connect children with rainforest poems, musical short stories, and other detailed work written by kids like themselves. Plus, the magazine solicits artwork from its loyal readers, which arrives in “a tidal wave, a mammoth amount of submissions,” Astrow says. The result, she explains, is that the magazine is constantly “collecting awesome talent from across the world.” The best moments, though, are when the kids get to experience their work in print for the first time.
“Kids never fail to see the world in unexpected ways, and that’s what I’ve always loved about young writers and artists. I think that that original perspective is what we’re looking for—it’s what we look toward in the established, adult, professional artists that we publish in the magazine too. It’s harder to find in adults than it is in kids,” Uhle says. “That originality and unfettered courage that kids have in how they take to the page, that’s the fun part.”
A spread from Illustoria’s Rainforest Issue encourages kids to cut out a series of illustrated images as playing cards, shuffle them and deal them out, write a story about the images in the order in which they come, and then reshuffle and write a new story. And in the Music Issue, interactive pages teach children how to line dance, make a rain stick, and create disco ball–themed treats. Themes of love, comics, blue, bugs, and desserts will propel future issues, and the possibilities for creativity within them, both for young readers and for the Illustoria team, will be endless. “We have permission. We’re encouraged to be strange and weird,” Astrow says. “When we go back to the drawing board,” Uhle adds, “it’s because we were too pedestrian the first time.”•
Find Illustoria via the McSweeney’s Store or at your local public library. Join us on February 15 at 5 p.m. Pacific, when author Dave Eggers will appear in conversation with special guest Caterina Fake and California Book Club host John Freeman to discuss The Every. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
HUMANITY UNDER FIRE
Chris Vognar writes a smart, lucid essay about the threat presented to reading and critical thinking by the technology developments depicted in The Every. —Alta
WHY READ THIS
Alta Journal books editor David L. Ulin recommends The Every, commenting that for Dave Eggers, authenticity resists the metrics of Big Tech and instead “embraces the messy, the unpredictable, the untamed—our essential humanness, in other words.” —Alta
Q&A
Ulin interviews Eggers, who has no plans to write a third book to make a trilogy about Big Tech. Eggers says, “I wrote The Circle and The Every to scare myself, and to horrify (and entertain?) the reader, and I can’t be in that place anymore.” —Alta
NEARLY FIVE GENERATIONS
Essayist and author José Vadi reviews Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, praising its vivid weaving together of oral history and fact, as well as its use of nuanced language. —Alta
ORDERING THE MESS OF LIFE
Critic and Alta contributor Mark Athitakis beautifully reviews poet and past CBC special guest Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, saying that Akbar “writes beautifully about addiction’s grip, the way it stokes false confidence.” —Los Angeles Times
BOOK AWARDS SHORT LISTS
The National Book Critics Circle announced its awards finalists and lifetime-achievement winners for this year. Among the finalists were past CBC author Myriam Gurba and Alta contributor Matthew Zapruder, along with other California authors such as Justin Torres, Daniel Mason, Susan Kiyo Ito, and Yunte Huang. —ABC News
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Jessica Blough is an associate editor at Alta Journal. She is a graduate of Tufts University and former editor in chief of the Tufts Daily.
