A Collection of Words

This zine, Droplts, was created by my family to help kids like me find their voices through creative writing, photography, music and art. Through their pieces, they can work together to use their droplets to make a river, and discover their own creativity. And when they grow up, they can join the sea unafraid.

The making of Droplts was such a fun and exciting process, and it would not have happened without my family. It all started when I found out what a Raspberry Pi was. A Raspberry Pi is essentially an inexpensive computer without a screen or keyboard. It is just the chip and fits in the palm of your hand, about the same size as a loose fist. I told my mom and she immediately thought that it would be a great summer project for us, so we decided to get one and install an ad blocker, offline AI (Ollama), run a Minecraft server, and host our own zine website, all on one tiny computer.

There were some problems along the way – including when we forgot all of our passwords and spent two hours trying to figure them out or reset them – but the end product is amazing. Thank you to everyone who submitted, and extra thanks to my brother, the staff photographer, and my mom, who really was the one who made all of this happen.