Any time I try to get the attention of a group of kids by hand-whistling, I’m surprised by how well it works. I can make a shrill enough sound to interrupt their brain waves. Once they pay attention again, they ask “How do you do that?” and I think about how I just learned it from friends or classmates when I was growing up. It’s as second-nature to me as learning how to play tag, make a fortune teller, draw the MASH grid, or look for all the letters of the alphabet (in sequence) on signs and license plates while on a road trip. I don’t have specific memories of the first time I engaged with those activities—they are simply a part of my childhood and the lore of the playground or campground.
If for some reason I couldn’t have figured out how to hand-whistle through being socialized into it by my peers, I would have learned about it in the Klutz, Inc. book Kids Shenanigans eventually. A glance at that book’s table of contents reminds me of the time-killing activities and tricks that I had either already learned or had yet to put into practice as a youth. I still never got the hang of snapping someone’s belt loops… Regardless, Nick Norlen, the editor behind Paper Airplane has achieved a similar sense of wonder and learning by bringing together a group of authors, artists, puzzlers, and researchers who share a wide variety of highly engaging articles, activities, and assignments for the first volume of what I hope is a long-running concern. The table of contents of Paper Airplane made me think about how we learn those childhood and young adolescent tricks and games in the absence of formal schooling on them. In a Bluesky post, contributor Kory Stamper positioned Paper Airplane as being kind of like Highlights magazine, but for adults. This first volume succeeded in drawing me in for a quick read with the promise of a deeper perusal still to come.
You can read all about the magazine online, so I will spare you from a dry run-down of its contents. (Purchase it here.) It is designed to be read on a tablet or laptop or desktop screen (i.e., not a phone) and it honestly deserves a print edition. I thought about going to the local library to print a one-off version of it for myself, but stopped when I realized its page count is not divisible by four, so it would not come out as an even number of signatures. I bet Norlen did that on purpose just to foil folks like me from making bootlegs. For real, though, the pages look great on my screen and some of the incredibly detailed images would lose something if run through a laser or inkjet printing process. The problem with a PDF is that it’s not going to show signs of wear and tear over the years as proof of my repeated readings of the text. It’s always going to be as pristine as the day I downloaded it. At least I can print out some of the puzzle pages to solve with pen or pencil if I’m so inclined.
OK, so I will highlight some particulars just because I think the contributors deserve to hear specific praise. The question that kicks off the first feature is “What's the most memorable thing you've ever cut from a piece of your writing?” and is full of interesting, brief excerpts that would have been on the cutting-room floor or been subject to the file-drawer problem if not for Paper Airplane. Kory Stamper’s “The Shape of Color” is an excerpt from her upcoming book, True Color: The Strange and Spectacular History of Defining Color–from Azure to Zinc Pink and looks to be as engrossing as her first one, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Another excerpt appears in the form of Phenomena: An Infographic Guide to Almost Everything by Camille Juneau and The Shelf Studio. It makes me think of technical engineering blueprints for parts of the natural world (and some from the human-made one). So that’s two books I’ve already added to my reading list for next year. The wordplay section by editor Norlen is a fun twist on the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game and Dave Shay’s "Venmo Nanofiction" recalls 1932’s Vanity Fair piece, “Ordeal by Cheque” by Wuther Crue. I haven’t mentioned the puzzles, artwork, photos, or comics, either. There are even black-and-white reproducible pages for some of the artwork if you want to color them in yourself! Just know that there is not a single dull moment in the 74 full-color pages of Paper Airplane, Vol. 1. Here’s to many more volumes in the future!
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