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Youngna Park is one of those people who just exudes an effortless cool. A lifelong New Yorker, she devotes her work to thinking about how children play and learn and the modern stresses of parents, and writes about it at Making it Work, her Substack newsletter. It’s filled with musings for parents, recommendations for kids, and observations on the absurdity of our every day life. She is also a tastemaker at NYMag’s The Strategist, where she writes about children’s toys, gear, and books. Youngna’s reading interests reach far beyond children’s books, though. You’ll see that in the expansive list of recommendations in this Q/A.
In addition to book recs, Youngna shares the cookie recipe she just screenshotted, a few good things that cost nothing, and her thinking on how much to post her kids online.
Get to know all the plants in your neighborhood: My dad always knew the names of all the plants in our yard and kept a big garden, so I absorbed a lot of this knowledge over time. My kids are growing up in Brooklyn, but I hope they also have a close relationship to nature. Since they were little, we’d always name or take pictures of the trees and flowers around the neighborhood and figure out what they are. Sometimes we look up the names of plants together on Plant ID. Now when we walk places, they’re “oh, look at the forsythia,” or “the star magnolia is finally blooming” or “that looks like a pepper plant,” and it’s both delightful and satisfying. I think it makes them a lot more attentive to their surroundings and to notice how they’re changing...
