I've been wanted to make an actual print zine, something physical you can hold in your hands, for quite a while now. So after plenty of discarded ideas, failed starts, and lack of motivation on the zine front over the last couple of years, I finally have a stack of zines sitting beside me as I write this.
What finally worked out was when I thought "hey, wouldn't it be nice if I had an unschooling 101 in a physical form as well? Something that people could actually hand out to a friend, parent, neighbor, or other person who wonders what this whole unschooling thing is about?" Thus this zine was born.
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| If you click this photo, it brings you to the store page on my website, where you can buy your own copy! |
I started with the 101 page on this blog, and anyone who's read that will see that that was clearly my outline. But then I started editing, adding bits from other posts I've written, filling in with snippets of original content, making it all make sense and provide complete answers without the benefit of all the links to be found on the original blog page... And at the end what I have is something still similar to the digital version, yet different enough to be truly it's own thing. The unschooling 101 page made solid and zine-like. I'm pretty pleased with it, to be honest.
Continuing in the spirit of it's namesake blog page, it's short. Three sheets of paper folded in half to create a twelve page booklet, with nine pages of text. I was ruthless with the writing of this zine, doing everything I could to keep it short. It's easy to recommend unschooling books to people, but unless they're especially interested or especially invested in you or your children, most people just aren't likely to read a whole book. This though? This can be read in just a handful of minutes. It's short, to the point, and easily digestible, complete with a few author and book recommendations at the end for those who want to dig deeper. I very much wanted this to be the thing even your French class teacher and nosy neighbor would actually be willing to take a few moments to read and think about!
I was so excited about this project I even made a video showing you the zine and talking briefly about it.
Sound like something you'd be interested in? Awesome! I'm so happy already with the amount of interest this has generated thanks to my mentioning of the project (quite a few mentions, really) on the Facebook page and other social media haunts. You can go buy it here on my store page. And if you want to share either this post or the store page on Facebook or Twitter, to help it reach a larger audience, I will be nothing but grateful.
I'm so happy to be offering my first ever non-digital writing for purchase, and I hope very much that you'll enjoy reading it, and find it a helpful tool in sharing with others the very basics of what unschooling is all about.
While working on this zine, I decided having multiple pairs of eyes looking it over would be really helpful. So I asked, and what I received was some truly wonderful feedback! After each person read it, I changed multiple small things, and I felt like it just got better every time. For helping to shape this zine I want to say a big THANK YOU to Loreto, Sol, Amy, and my sister Emilie. For a whole lot of assistance with the printing and assembling of this zine, I want to thank my mother Debbie. Without her I probably would have just given up in frustration, and you wouldn't all be reading this now!
