I recently reread James Thurber’s Foreword to The Fifth New Yorker Album (Harper & Brothers, 1932); it’s always good (for me at least) to reread — I know that the material will eventually sink in.
About halfway through the piece Thurber writes:
“What, if it may be asked, of the offspring of the children who are to become the men and women of tomorrow’s New Yorker albums?”
It’s a pity we haven’t had a 2026 New Yorker Album to peruse this past year (which likely would have been titled something along the lines of The New Yorker 100th Anniversary Album). That certainly would’ve been useful if we wanted to take a shot at answering Thurber’s question.
One of the many things I love about revisiting The New Yorker Albums is the time travel. 
They are time capsules that were never buried in someone’s yard or encased in a building cornerstone. Since that Fifth New Yorker Album, there have been fifteen more through the years — all of them tracking the offspring Thurber wondered about. Without a modern day Album (the last was an updated paperback published in 2006 of the massive Complete Cartoons) we’re left on our own to figure out what’s been going on, New Yorker cartoon prodigy-wise, for the past twenty-years. Something tells me that that void would’ve thrown Thurber into a fit.
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Thurber On Screen In Columbus
Lucky you if you’re out Columbus way today!
From The Lantern, February 16, 2026, “Thurber On Screen: Ohio Goes To The Movies Celebrates A Columbus Humorist Thursday”
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James Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website