Issue Sixteen

Orange is like a child in summer. Orange doesn’t want to stay still. Orange wants to make something or take something apart. Orange wants to question everything. This issue considers orange as a color, orange as food, orange as what comes on either side of rain, orange as a song to break the heat. 

In this issue, we feature a semaphore flagger for you to cut out.

If you don't want to cut up your magazine, or if you need more flaggers, we have a download of both the alphabet and the flagger! Enjoy!

The target audience for each magazine is children ages 3–8, or children who are being read to and/or are just learning to read—but because children are never far from their siblings and caregivers, we created a magazine that can be enjoyed by all ages, from 1 to 100.

 Root & Star is published six times per year. Join us with one issue, or SUBSCRIBE here for 40 full-color pages of beauty and life in your mailbox SIX times per year.

Thank you for allowing us to bring heartfelt literature and art to children all year long. Hooray!

Issue 16 Contributors

• C.M. Andrews (Spell for a Summer's Day poem) is a writer and teacher who lives on a small farm at the top of a tall hill in rural New Hampshire. In the summer, she enjoys exploring tide pools and mountaintops with her husband and son.
• Tani Bunchō (mission page art) was a Japanese painter who lived from 1763–1840.
•  Nancy Thorne Chambers (Orange You Glad poem) is a mom, grandma, therapist and creator of large ceramic sculptures. A Story Place, her installation of thirty animals listening to a child read a story, was shown at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. 
• Martyna Czub (Hello/Goodbye) is an illustrator originally from Poland, currently living in Canada. She loves metaphors hidden in art and those you can find in nature. Inspired by them, she creates her own handmade accordion books. 
• Amelia Damse (child photo) is a self taught photographer with a passion for documentary style photography and portraiture.  She especially enjoys capturing candid moments of her children in their day to day lives. Follow along their journey on Instagram! 
• Shelley Davies (Orange collage) creates colorful artwork with whatever’s at hand. With a love of treasure hunting, every day can turn up something she can make into art, whether it’s a drawing, painting, sculpture or collage. She likes to go on these treasure hunts with an imaginary dog, sometimes two, just for fun.
• Jennifer Davis (Tell Me art) is a painter from Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Her paintings are inspired by furry critters, scary movies, and vintage toys. 
• Heather Feinberg (Ammi) is a mother, counselor, writer, educator, and the founder of Mindful Kids, a nonprofit organization in Austin, Texas, whose purpose is to help children (and the child inside us all) discover their voices, access their power, and, most importantly, connect to their inner knowing. 
• David Gregal Jr. (Ask Arden art) lives in Washington, DC. At the end of the day, he loves reading books with his wife and two kids before bedtime.
• J.D. Ho (How to Break a Hot Day text) is vermilion, from the Latin vermiculus, diminutive of vermis, which means “worm.”
• Abbigail Knowlton Israelsen (Cracked Pot art) is an artist who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Abbi likes to look for fossils, mushrooms, and geodes with her four children.
• Aimee Hagerty Johnson (Prediction) has always loved to do all kinds of art. Some of her favorite things to draw are horses, sweaters, coffee pots, trees, and telescopes. 
• Petya Kazantseva (front cover) lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her passion is drawing and creating. She loves to travel and dream of everything beautiful, but mostly she finds her magic when being around friends. Petya adores life, and she has promised herself that she will turn all the impossible into the possible.
• Hee Yeon Kim (Orange Veggies) is an illustrator/mommy in love with chubby animals, babies, and flowers, currently living in Portland, Oregon.
• Lida Larina (Root & Star comic) lives in Russia. Every day, Lida walks her best friend—her black dog named Babai. After their walk, Lida draws the sleeping Babai.
• Chicho Lorenzo (Cura Sana) loves to draw. Not just with orange, but with all colors. Not just with lines, but with notes, with silly faces... with Spanish songs.
• Courtney Mandryk once clapped orange fire out of someone's hair. Motto: You got to rock what you got.
• Laura Poulette (Spell for a Summer’s Day art) is an artist who paints pictures of tiny bits of plants and nature she collects in her woods. She lives with her family in a house they built themselves in the hills outside of Berea, Kentucky. 
• Heather Franzen Rutten (Coat fable art) is an artist and illustrator living in Philadelphia. In her free time, she likes playing video games and attending orchestra concerts. 
• Atabey Sánchez-Haiman (Orange You Glad art) is a Puerto Rican artist and scientist who lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her son. They spend their days drawing, reading, laughing, and going for walks. 
• Tania Voskoboinyk (How to Break a Hot Day art art) is an illustrator living between Ukraine and Canada. She loves to express stories in beautiful visual form.
• Kanjana Yotjan (Semaphores) grew up in Thailand. She moved to New York City where she grew her artistic skill, and currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. She loves mountain hikes, morning lakes to swim, summers on the farm, and telling stories of speaking animals to little kids.