Panther City: Tales of a Gen X Grade 3 Project Run Amok

Long before social media, cell phones, the Internet, expansive gender definitions, or even cable TV, a 3rd grade class collaborated on a paper city. Conceived as a way to make learning fun, the project quickly devolved into an exercise in accusations, subterfuge, and childish vandalism.

Narrated by 8-year-old Annie, the best girl artist in class, Panther City is both a comedy of manners for adults and an unvarnished recollection of a bygone moment in the pre-Bicentennial American Midwest, as observed by Ayun Halliday, Chief Primatologist of The East Village Inky zine and the author of No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late.

Fortified with 8 essential vitamins, a Teacher's Edition and illustrations by an actual 8-year-old!

Author: Ayun Halliday
Illustrator: Leni Yow-Fairs
Publisher: Theater of the Apes
Page Count: 116pp
Size: 5.25 x 8
Notes: paperback, b/w
Date of Publication: November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1950272471