May/June 2012

Fascinating full-color maps of imaginary and imagined lands fill the latest Muse. And if you're the type who reads the words between the pictures, you're in luck! You'll learn that many people once believed in a continent south of India populated mostly by lemurs, lorises, aye-ayes--primates that any fan of cute Youtube animal videos knows and loves. You'll take a tour of beloved literary realms like Oz and the Shire. You'll read about teens who are designing the cities of the future and the adults who take them seriously. Finally, ever met a Neandertal? Probably not, since they haven't walked the earth for millennia. But this issue will give you an idea of what early hominids might have been like. 

A creative drama teacher helped this month's Muserologist visit the many imagined worlds of Shakespeare before school every Friday. What club takes you and your classmates out of school and into an alternate universe? When do you get to be someone you're not? Tell us about it, and we might print your story in our next issue. 

For this month's contest, What's Next?, follow the Voltville kids' examples and tell us what invention or technology you expect to find in the cities of the future. Maybe in those future cities we'll be able to install all the incredible fonts readers sent in for our January contest. Check out the winners, including a pie alphabet and another made of flexible dancers. 

Research Lab

Kokonino County

  • A Paradise of Your Own

    TOWN HALL DISCUSSION: Lemuria? Atlantis? Fakes! But my continent? Totally real.

  • The Play's the Thing

    MUSEROLOGY: "We wait out first period, scraping the doughnut box for bits of sugar we've missed, chanting our lines over and over under our breath."

  • Today's Tools, Tomorrow's Artifacts

    TOWN HALL DISCUSSION: What will our treasures and garbage say about us?

  • What's Next?

    CONTEST: The future's inventors weigh in on future inventions.