How to use this Page

I’m a great believer in kids’ magazines. For a start, they are a great way to support your child’s reading for pleasure:

They’re designed for dipping in and out of, making it easy to squeeze a bit of reading in at any point of the day. Brief articles, often highly illustrated also break down barriers reluctant readers might have; blocks of text tend to be relatively short, and the reader doesn’t feel s/he has to make a huge commitment to enjoy or learn something.

You can choose ones closely aligned to real interests your child has. Maybe your child is crazy about horses – there’s a magazine for that. Or cycling or gardening… you don’t have to stick to magazines aimed at children.

They’re reading material you can have very easily to hand. They can be stashed in bags for journeys out, they can be read at kitchen tables. Magazines (and newspapers) “hang around” making for easy serendipitous reading.

Their timely nature creates a buzz about reading – whether the magazine gets delivered once a week through your letterbox, or you know it comes out once a month and so make a special trip to the newsagents. The fact that magazines appear at certain times creates a frisson of excitement, and something that many kids will look forward to if you subscribe or get into the magazine habit.

Many magazines are highly illustrated, either with photos or artwork. Just because kids can read themselves, it doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy illustration of one sort or the other. Indeed, in today’s world with a highly visual focus, images are almost essential if you want to grab people’s attention.

Eco Kids Planet Magazine is a new nature and environment magazine aimed at children aged 7 to 11. The magazine uses narrative non-fiction, i.e. fun, fictional characters in a story format, to convey facts about nature and the environment, providing children with real world examples of how they can make a difference when it comes to looking after our planet.

It’s a brilliant success story: Eco Kids Planet Magazine was originally a Kickstarter project, but it is now stocked in one of the biggest newsagent/bookshop chains in the UK – WHSmiths. However, you can also get your hands on copies by entering a today’s brilliant international giveaway. First prize is a year’s subscription to Eco Kids Planet Magazine, and the Runners-Up Prize is a bundle of 6 past issues. Both prizes would be great for schools as well as families.

The nitty gritty of the giveaway

This giveaway is open WORLDWIDE

To enter, simply leave a comment on this blog post.

For extra entries you can:

(1) Tweet about this giveaway, perhaps using this text:
Win a year’s subscription to @EcoKidsPlanet – a kids’ nature magazine – over on @playbythebook’s blog http://www.playingbythebook.net/?p=32552

(2) Share this giveaway on your Facebook page, Google Plus page or blog

You must leave a separate comment for each entry for them to count.

The winner and runner-up will be chosen at random using random.org.

The giveaway is open for two weeks and closes on Earth Day ie Wednesday April 22nd 5pm UK time. I will contact the winner and runner-up via email. If I do not hear back from the winner/runner-up within one week of emailing them, I will re-draw as appropriate.

You can find out more about Eco Kids Planet Magazine on their website: http://www.ecokidsplanet.co.uk/.

Good luck with the giveaway!

Display Comments Add a Comment

Today sees the launch of a new national magazine for families, designed to help parents and their kids develop a passion for stories and reading. Storytime magazine is packed with quality illustrations, games, reading tips, and most importantly of all, great stories, poems and extracts from novels, just right for sharing as a family.

Advert free, and with no plastic toy on the front cover, Storytime will be stocked in all major retailers including WH Smiths, supermarkets and local newsagents, retailing for £3.99. Whilst it is a UK publication, subscriptions are welcome from anywhere in the world.

I’m a big fan of quality magazines for kids (my very favourites being The Phoenix Comic, and Stew, though Okido and Anorak are also much loved here) and so I took the opportunity to interview Storytime’s editor about this new and very exciting venture.

Zoe: Wow, what a brave adventure you’ve set out on: Starting a new magazine is a risky business, so what’s the motivation for you behind starting Storytime?
 
Storytime: As a team, we’ve all been coming up with ideas for successful magazines and creating them for other publishers for several years now (including magazines for children) and we’ve had a burning desire to create Storytime for some time. Earlier this year, we decided to go for it and become a publisher in our own right. Why Storytime? We all love and value stories, and I’ve been doing storytelling sessions with local kids for a while now, so the idea of creating a magazine that delivers different types of stories every month, all beautifully illustrated, and getting kids and parents enthused and passionate about reading was hugely appealing to us. We also liked the idea of creating something that could make happy memories. We often fondly reminisce about the comics and magazines of our childhoods, and we’d like that to be the case for our readers. We’d love readers to look back on Storytime with fond memories, recalling their favourite stories and illustrations.



Zoe: What features can readers expect to see in each monthly issue? 
 
Storytime: Every issue features a balance of several types of stories – there’s a classic fairy tale, a myth or legend, a famous fable, a folk tale, a tale from around the world, one or two poems and an extract from a well-loved book. Some of the stories will be familiar, some are famous and a few of the stories might be new to some readers. There’s a good mix of heroes, heroines, baddies, animals, magic, and monsters. We’ve also got a few pages of puzzles (and occasionally a board game) – all inspired by the stories in the magazine. Finally, working with our education consultant, we have a panel of storytelling or reading tips in every issue, plus Story Magic – two pages dedicated to educational activities, facts and storytelling ideas for each story in the magazine. We’re really proud of this section – it’s very accessible and we hope it will inspire parents to feel more confident in storytelling and help bring the stories to life.
 
We’d love to featuring brand new stories from known authors in later issues and we’d like to include book recommendations, too.



Zoe: You’ve got a great range of beautiful illustrations in the first issue. How do you source your illustrators?
 
Storytime: Our art director has a great eye and is constantly researching and looking for the right illustrator for each upcoming story. She has built up a gigantic wish list of illustrators over the last few months! We’re trying to keep the styles varied and interesting across each issue, so there’s an exciting mix of contemporary, retro and more traditional. It’s been particularly gratifying working with illustrators to see how they interpret some of the classics. Issue 1’s quirky Alice in Wonderland by Mirdinara delighted us all; we have a gorgeous and colourful Wizard of Oz cover by Alex Wilson; and Birgitta Sif’s Mole and Ratty from The Wind in the Willows is just exceptional. It’s great to provide a platform for up and coming illustrators, too.



Zoe: You’ve chosen no adverts, no cover toy – which as a parent I’m delighted by – you’ve been able to get stocked by major stockists, and you’re sending a free copy of Storytime Issue 1 to all libraries nationwide: How have you managed to achieve all this? 



Storytime: By sticking to our guns! From the outset, we wanted to ensure that Storytime magazine was something that would be kept and treasured, not thrown away, which is a bit different to many of the other magazines in this market. We’ve had a universally positive reaction to the concept and have had great support – getting so many great stockists has been a real boon for our launch and has confirmed that we are doing the right thing. We’ll be stocked in WH Smiths, all major supermarkets, local newsagents and Waterstones, but would love to be stocked in independent bookshops, too. 
 
One of the key reasons for creating Storytime magazine was to open up a world of stories for readers, so sending out the first issue to libraries was really important to us from the start – it means that these stories are accessible to anyone. We’re also offering heavily discounted subscriptions to schools and libraries to encourage more reading for pleasure.
 
Zoe: I can see the magazine being enjoyed by parents reading the stories aloud to their kids, but also by independent readers – who are you hoping will read the magazine?
 
Storytime: Actually, both. We hope that parents will read and share Storytime magazine with younger children, but that older children will enjoy reading it independently. We’d love for parents to keep and treasure the issues so that, in time, their child can read a story independently that was once read to them during a story session.



Zoe: What do you believe a magazine can do differently / better than a book for promoting reading for pleasure?



Storytime: We very much hope that Storytime magazine can work hand-in-hand with books to promote reading for pleasure. We’re featuring an extract from a Brilliant Book in every issue in the hope that we’ll encourage parents and children to want to get hold of a copy and carry on reading a classic. We’re also running a competition every month, which gives readers a chance to win beautiful copies of the featured book. If Storytime magazine can encourage children to read more books and fall in love with stories, then we’ll have accomplished one of our goals. If we had to say one thing we’re doing differently to books, we’re offering wide availability and accessibility (from major supermarkets and local newsagents to online subscriptions and a digital version), and a good value cover price for completely fresh content (a whole new world of stories!) every month. And thanks to our uniquely varied content, perhaps parents and children will develop a love for particular types of stories they might not have encountered before – poetry, myths or folk tales, for example. That would make us happy.

Zoe: Hear, hear!
 
Full details of the new magazine, including how to subscribe can be found at http://www.storytimemagazine.com/
 

Display Comments Add a Comment

(1) All this past week, and next week, BBC Radio 4 Extra is serialising Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls. It’s wonderfully read by David Hayman. Anyone can listen, worldwide, but episodes are not available for long online so don’t hang around. In each case the reading of A Monster Calls starts about 45 minutes into the host programm (The 4 O’Clock Show)
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5, today’s episode, isn’t yet available on line.

A Monster Calls continues all of next week, every day at about 16.45 on Radio 4 Extra (digital or online).

(2) The House of Illustration has created a gorgeous looking set of resources for teachers of science at KS2 (7-11 year olds, here in the UK, though I’m sure these will be useful anywhere science is taught). Science + Illustration? I love it! You can find out more by watching the video below, or by clicking on http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/teachers-resources/.

(3) Finally, we’re huge comic fans here and I found out this week about a comic which needs your help.

“LOAf Magazine is a new publication for 9-12 year olds, jampacked with comics, stories, puzzles and more. LOAf is dedicated to creating a place where the imaginings of brilliant emerging and established illustrators, writers and narrative artists are collected for children to read and enjoy. More than that: it’s our aim to make it a magazine where children ARE some of those talented contributors. A perfect circle!”

It sounds terrific, but it needs financial help to get off the ground and so it’s working on crowd-funding the first issue. If you’d like to support LOAF you can find out more, and pledge your support here: http://www.peoplefund.it/loaf-magazine/

It’s current list of contributors includes Joff Winterhart, Rose Robbins, Mel Castrillon, Alexis Deacon, Liv Bargman, Daisy Hirst, Mike Smith and Trudi Esberger amongst others, and I for one would love to see it get off the ground.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Seriously. I know it’s only October but I’ve got one of M and J’s presents sorted and I’m confident what’s here today will do it for you and your kids too. Not only can you forget another plastic toy that will only annoy you with its flashing lights, I think you can even stop worrying about what books to buy to put under the tree…

So what’s the perfect gift, the one that will keep kids entertained all year, continue to excite them, encourage their curiosity and feed their understanding of the world?

A magazine. But not just any magazine, but one of the trio from Bayard: Story Box, Adventure Box or Discovery Box.

Story Box is a read-aloud magazine to share with 3-6 year-olds. Each 52 page issue contains an illustrated story (essentially an entire picture book), a comic strip, poems, animal and science pages “to encourage children’s curiosity and introduce them to scientific thinking”, and a selection of activities and games designed to help practise number and letter skills.

Adventure Box is the next step up and follows a similar structure with a comic strip, games and science pages but this time the longer story consists of chapters aimed at independent readers aged 6-9.

Discovery Box is aimed at 9-12 year olds and again contains stories and activities but has the strongest focus of all the magazines on animal, history and science topics.

All 3 magazines are produced with the utmost of care and attention to detail. These beautiful glossy magazines printed on nice thick paper (good for multiple readings) and are full of tremendous photos and illustrations. The photos easily match the quality of those in National Geographic Kids, and are actually more breathtaking for not being cluttered up with lots of small pieces of text or adverts.

The illustrations are often from award winning artists; the copies I was sent included work by Rotraut Susanne Berner, Alison Lester and Marc Boutavant. The Box Magazines have great writing and art for children at their heart, supporting as they do the International Board on Books for Young People (an international no

Display Comments Add a Comment

On Monday I introduced Playing by the book’s week-long celebration of magazines for kids by looking at 3 very different publications, National Geographic Kids, Puffin Post, and Alphabet Glue. Today’s selection of magazines, however, all have something in common; they are incredibly beautifully produced, with stunning illustrations of the highest quality. In fact, for their pictures alone these are magazines you’ll want to keep or even repurpose and turn into art to hang on your walls.

Okido describes itself as “The Arts and Science Magazine for Kids” and is “designed for children aged 3-7“. Our very first impression was an excellent one – the magazine is really wonderfully produced, with beautiful feeling paper and very appealing, colourful illustrations. As a hook to encourage M to read I couldn’t have asked for anything better – she was very keen to read her way through the entire magazine in one sitting!

We were all delighted with the great mixture of features in Okido; there are short stories illustrated in a wide variety of different ways, games, craft tutorials, colouring in and other pen and paper activities and even songs, all based on the theme for each issue (past themes have included Dirt, Weather and Robots).

As a parent I was delighted by the mix of art and science (Okido is supported by the Wellcome Trust) – I felt that M learned and did lots (ie playing and exploration as well as reading) as a result of reading this magazine. Okido is so engaging in its production and content I really couldn’t recommend it more highly.

If I had to find one “issue” with Okido, it would be its stated target age of 3-7. Whilst non readers may enjoy the art and craft activities in the magazine, I really believe most will be gained from it if your child is already reading. I actually bought Okido for M two years ago and was disappointed then as I felt the cover price was a lot to pay when all she did was scribble inside, but now she’s able to read and really get involved with the activities, I think the magazine is brilliant and definitely worth subscribing to.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Over the summer holidays I’ve been keen to keep M reading, enjoying reading and developing her reading skills. Of course we’ve read plenty of books together and to each other, but I’ve also been trying to sneak in some “hidden” reading where ever possible. One of the easiest ways I’ve found of getting M really excited about reading to me is by giving her a magazine.

I didn’t want to be buying TV or film tie-in magazines, so over the summer I’ve tried out a few others to see which ones we liked best as a family and which ones M has enjoyed. Over the course of the coming week I’ll be reviewing a whole range of different children’s magazines. We’ve found one we’ll definitely be subscribing to – I hope you will find something right for your family too!

I have fond memories of oohing and aahing over photos in my parents’ National Geographic magazines when I was a kid, so I was definitely up for giving M a go with National Geographic Kids.

M loved the posters that form the central pages of every edition, the free gifts were exciting, but her favourite aspect of the magazine was the number of images and notes about animals.

The magazine has a very “busy” feel to it. There are lots of different font sizes, colours, photos, boxes and columns all overlaying each other in fact it looks like a pinboard with lots of bursts of ideas, postcards and post-it notes stuck all over it.

As a parent there were some aspects of the magazine that didn’t appeal to me. The adverts were almost indistinguishable from “real” content, and I felt too much of the magazine was given over to competitions (a sneakier form of advertising in many cases).

National Geographic Kids is the cheapest children’s magazine we tried (with a cover price of £3.20), is very widely available in the UK and with numerous international editions too, and is published monthly.

If you’d like to subscribe to the UK edition of National Geographic Kids at a specially discounted rate of £20 for 12 issues (almost 50% off) click here and enter the discount code NGKPBTB.

Being a house of book lovers I was very keen introduce M to “the best children’s book magazine

3 Comments on Reading outside the book – a week-long celebration of magazines for kids (1), last added: 8/22/2011

Display Comments

jojoebi said, on 8/21/2011 5:15:00 PM

we get the Nat Geo Kids mag and I have to agree with the advertising and other ‘crap’ in there, for a quality publication it really annoys me

Even in Australia said, on 8/21/2011 5:29:00 PM

Puffin Post sounds amazing. Too bad it would cost me nearly $200 for a yearly subscription.

Susan Stephenson, the Book Chook said, on 8/22/2011 2:33:00 AM

I have a post coming up about magazines, and will link to this for sure, Zoe. Looking forward to reading your next suggestions!

Add a Comment