The Chickaloonies are trying something new at the State Fair this year. The audience runs the show instead of watching a scripted reading. They build brand-new characters.
Artists Dimi Macheras and Casey Silver are the Chickaloonies. The duo stopped by the Big Cabbage Radio studio in downtown Palmer for an interview with reporter Emily Forstner. She ended up part of the story.
Macheras and Silver are the artists and storytellers behind the all-ages graphic novel series, also named Chickaloonies. The stories follow best friends Sasquatch Emoji and Mr. Yelly on a quest to become the world’s greatest storytellers.
Macheras and Silver met years ago in a comic book store. The friendship grew into a creative partnership.
Macheras grew up in Chickaloon and graduated from Palmer High School. The series name comes from what his mother named all the kids running around. She called them Chickaloonies.
Macheras and Silver have three Chickaloonies books.
Macheras describes the books as a way of passing down Dena’ina Athabaskan knowledge and values. The books are built on the idea that story and image carry more power together than apart.
That idea plays out on Dena’ – People’s stage at the Gathering Place on the Fairgrounds at 2:30 each day.
Silver is dressed as Mr. Yelly. He encourages the crowd for ideas. Macheras is dressed as Emoji. With his black to the audience he sketches the crowd’s ideas in real time.
The drawing is displayed on the big screen on stage. The audience watches their character take shape in real time.
The Chickaloonies ran the same exercise with Forstner in the studio. They asked her what kind of character she wanted. She said a dog, of course.
Questions continued as Macheras sketched a teenage, humanoid Golden Retriever-Border Collie mix: laid-back, ballcap, flannel shirt, cowboy boots, a fork in one paw and a ball in the other.
Names are important, Silver says. But they come last.
Silver steers every character creation toward motivation, not just powers or looks. Looks are the easy part, he says. Motivation turns a doodle into a story kids can connect with.
He traces that instinct to a childhood game with his father. They would guess a person’s personality from the bumper stickers on their car.
It’s ok with Silver if kids start with something familiar. He says the trick is helping them build it into something new.
Macheras and Silver have run this exercise more than 200 times in classrooms, libraries and conference halls. They say no two characters are the same.
For Macheras, the workshops keep circling back to his grandmother, Katie Wade, and the stories she told him growing up.
He was illustrating her stories by age 11. They still shape the way he draws.
The Chickaloonies series spans three books. They are the two original Chickaloonies graphic novels and the brand new third one, Rebel Road. All are available at the fair booth.
Rebel Road is set in Kenny Lake. It is available at the Chickaloonies booth at the Gathering Place in a fair exclusive hardcover. Wide release is set for November. Pre-order it at chickaloonies.com.
The book features a character named Moxie Noodle. He is a musk ox. A room of librarians at a 2024 conference co-created Moxie Noodle. This is proof, the pair say, that collaboration doesn’t stop when the workshop ends.
Back at the fair, the Chickaloonies cabin doubles as a gallery of the audience-built characters. They expect 14 completed portraits by the end of the fair.
The Chickaloonies show runs daily at 2:30 p.m. The Chickaloonies cabin in the Gathering Place is open 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. every day of the fair.
As for Forstner’s emoji dog? He’s Radar the Radio Dog. His fast-footed sidekick is named Cabby.
The full interview with the Chickaloonies will be available on bigcabbageradio.org in Morning Show Interviews under podcasts by Saturday.
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Emily Forstner reported this Page Two article and yours truly, Lee Henrikson produced it. If you have an idea for a Page 2 topic, please email us at page2@radiofreepalmer.org.
That’s it for today and the news on Page Two on Wednesday, August 26, 2026.
Photo courtesy of chickaloonies.com