Papier Mache

Most children’s magazines are garbage. They fall into three categories, all of them bad. First are the commercial ones crammed with product placement—cards, toys, whatever gets kids begging their parents for money. Second are the ones pretending to educate while pushing some ideology the publisher believes in. Third, worst of all, aren’t even for kids—they’re instruction manuals for parents on how to raise children properly.

Papier Mache is Australian and it’s different. Second issue just came out. It’s light and thoughtful without being precious. Good photographs. Stuff that actually looks interesting. Fashion that doesn’t feel like advertising. DIY projects that seem like they’d be fun. All of it centered on what matters when you’re young—that sense that anything could still happen, that the world’s still open.

It comes from The Convenience Store, an art and design blog in Sydney. Beck, Alice, and Paul—Paul does the visual design, Alice the art direction, Beck’s the dreamer. They describe themselves that way, which is nice.

I’m not convinced it travels much beyond certain pockets though. I can see it finding an audience among particular kinds of families—thoughtful ones in Berlin or Sydney or Brooklyn with taste and time and money. But those families are probably at the farmer’s market right now buying heirloom vegetables and debating schools, so maybe where a good magazine ends up doesn’t really matter. It exists. Some kids will find it.