Hey Day: Super-Amazing, Funk-Da-Crazing, Ultra-Glazing Things to Do, Make and Ponder Every Day of the Year by Super Clea and Keva Marie

Back in the day (the early Oughts), zines were kind of a big deal.
Think of graphic novels or manga now--zines were hot. Girl Power was hot, thanks to the unlikely combination of Dr. Mary Pipher and the Spice Girls. Craftiness was...kind of hot. Nothing like the humongous and all-devouring DIY movement of today, but still hot. So, HarperCollins took a leap and published Hey Day, a zine-ish daybook for the young, empowered and artsy crafty. It was scribed and designed (on an iMac! Those were the days.) by Keva Marie [Dine] and Super Clea [Hantman].

It's big, a little messy and totally exuberant with a charming naiveness. This is a daybook you could have cut and pasted with your best friend in high school during study periods, if you had the stamina. It's full of inside jokes and random asides and cute little doodles in the margin. Organized in a page-a-day format, you instructions for decorating your locker, meanderings about the word "epiphany," and a set of questions for making your friend the ideal birthday cake:

1. When the birthday person orders a milkshake, what flavor does he/she get? This is the flavor the cake should be.
2. If the birthday person were to buy a party wig, would it be blue or green or pink or white or what? This shall determine what flavor/color the frosting should be.
3. What kind of outfit would the birthday person most likely wear? This is how to decorate the cake.

There are love paens to your local library (<3!), weird little-known holidays to celebrate and essays on the beauty of girls with glasses and how one visit to a cool aunt's flat can change your perspective forever:

Ahh, the bliss I felt when she led us down the long white hall into her studio. My eyes raced over the room.Tables with paints sprawled all about, stacks of canvases, buckets of brushes and pens and pencils, piles of multicolored construction paper, and every tool you could imagine. Oh, and books, so many books. Books on Thai architecture, books on Paul Klee, Andy Warhol and even Madonna. More books than I'd ever seen in someone's house before.

I was overloaded, overjoyed. I had a flash. A moment of clarity: people do live art. Women do make art for a living. It is possible to live in the blissful creation of your own devices. I decided right then and there that when I had my own home I would revel in its beauty. I would live in it to the fullest and one day, one day when I was able to do it, I would work at home and make art. But in the meantime, I continued to sew buttons on everything.

Hey Day is kicky and young and eccentric, full of creative energy and good things to ponder. Though sadly out of print, it's worth picking up for the artsy/bookish/quirky pre-teen on your giftlist, or yourself if you're having a fit of nostalgia.

Excuse me while I turn up Patti Smith and make some fairy bread. The year 2001 is calling and she wants to reminisce.

Hey Day: Super Amazing, Funk-da-Crazing, Ultra-Glazing Things to Do, Make and Ponder Every Day of the Year by Super Clea and Keva Marie

Sadly, out of print, but try the fine sellers at Amazon.com (be sure to check their feedback!) and Albris. Bookcloseouts.com sometimes sells remainder copies; I recommend them wholeheartedly as they've given me the best service of any online bookseller.

Keva Dine, now a professional recruiter of creative types, has her own website.
I adore her essay on Why Girls Kick Ass.
Clea Hantman recently published the I Wanna series; 30 Days to Getting Over the Dork You Used To Call Your Boyfriend will be out in January 2008.

You can read interviews with the authors at Craftygal and TeenReads.com.

Oh, and here's a recipe for fairy bread. Randomly, Australia has really cute snacks: fairy bread, lamingtons, butterfly cakes, pavlova...lamington butterfly cakes.