A Guide to Making Zines in the Library

 I've recently been running a successful library lesson where 11 and 12 year old students make zines. 

To make things slightly easier and faster, my colleague and I in the library made the zines before the lessons. I used a guide that you can find here.

Before I handed them out, I gave the students what I was hoping we could accomplish with them. I know that to simply hand over a blank zine and tell students to "make something" can be overwhelming, at least it would have been for me. 

Therefore I give them some prompting, I used to run this program in the public library in Canada, a lot of the youth made "how to" guides out of them. Some examples are, how to survive a zombie attack, how to be the best basketball player. Some kids simply listed their favourite kinds of cats, and so on.

I told them that they could make them out of whatever they wanted but that it should be something that they really love doing. 

At the end, my goal is to catalogue these zines and have them in the library so other students can interact with them.

It's been a huge it, the students have been asking to make multiple zines and have really enjoyed sharing them with others. I am going to create a photo gallery once I have them all collected. It's a fun and simple activity that needs very little prep or equipment. 

I am giving the students two lessons to complete them, which is almost two hours of working time.