October is Children’s Magazine Month

October 7, 2008 /

Maya receives quite a few magazines.  To the question posed to Sarah Palin about what she read, Maya said she would have answered, “I read Cricket, Stone Soup, Discover, Nick Magazine, and National Geographic Kids.  Whew.  That’s a lot of magazines.  We’re pretty willing to spoil her when it comes to reading.  It’s hard to say no when she wants a book or a magazine, because we want her to love to read, though of course we have been known to take her to the library quite often, and when she thought she had lost her wallet a few months ago, she was most concerned about the loss of her library card.

When Maya was a baby, my sister-in-law, who is a librarian, gave her a subscription to a magazine for babies, Babybug.  Maya loved it.  She loved the pictures, loved the little rhymes and stories.  Loved to chew on it.  She would ‘read’ it over and over again, and was always happy when a new issue arrived in the mail.  Eventually, the subscription ran out, and she outgrew the magazine, and I kind of forgot about it.   Several years later, when Maya was in 3rd grade, at back to school night, her teacher asked if anyone would be willing to give the classroom a subscription to Spider magazine.  I had never heard of it.  But it turns out, Spider is published by the same group that publishes Babybug.  I had a little extra money at the time, so I purchased a subscription for the classroom, and another for Maya.  She looked forward to receiving it, enjoyed the stories and the poems.  Loved it.   Eventually, she outgrew Spider, and grew into Cricket, which is the magazine she looks forward to receiving now.  I think they put out 9 issues a year, and she always looks forward to the arrival of a new one.  Next up is Cicada, the same group, just for kids who are a bit older.

The Babybug/Ladybug (she missed this one)/Spider/Cricket/Cicada line is their ‘literary’ grouping of magazines.  They also have some that are targeted to children who love science, and others for kids who enjoy History (Maya loves History, so I’m wondering if this might be a good idea for her as well….and actually, she enjoys science too, hmmm…maybe some Christmas ideas when family starts asking…)

I cannot recommend these magazines enough.  Encouraging your child to read is so important, and giving them a variety of reading material is a big help in this area.  If your child doesn’t gravitate toward books, there’s nothing wrong with directing them towards magazines that might prove more interesting to them.

Another magazine that Maya receives is Stone Soup.  One of Ted’s old professors really loves this magazine, and loves to give it to any children he knows who might be interested.  Stone Soup is another literary magazine, this one written and illustrated by kids.  She LOVES it.

All of these magazines come to you without ads, so they do cost a bit more than your standard kids magazine. But while Maya enjoys her Nick and National Geographic subscriptions somewhat, she doesn’t dive into them like she does the group above. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of not renewing her subscriptions to Nick and National Geographic Kids. Don’t tell her. I wonder if she’ll notice, and if she does, if she’ll even care?

10 Comments

  • Joan

    October 7, 2008 at 10:13 am

    My daughter prefers adult magazines -wait that doesn’t sound right! She likes her Dad’s Popular Science, and from me Real Simple, Southern Living and Our State (about NC). The boy child can’t wait for his Sports Illustrated to arrive of course.

  • Liz

    October 7, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    J, what a great idea!! T would love these–I’ll have to look into them further. The only question is can I wait until his birthday or Christmas to buy them, or will I go for instant gratification? 🙂 Right now he calls catalogs his magazines and loves to page through them–luckily he hasn’t figured out that it is really just pages of things to buy and still sees it as just pages of pictures to look at. 🙂

  • Ted

    October 7, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    I remember Maya hating Stone Soup when she first started getting it. I don’t know why, but it seems she was a little put off by the fact that kids roughly her age and older were contributors to the magazine. What a difference a couple of years make. Now she loves it. Go figure.

  • J

    October 7, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Yeah, I’m glad we kept them all, because now that she loves it, she enjoys going back and reading back issues. 🙂 It was the same for Cricket…before she was really quite old enough, she wasn’t interested. Now she loves it.

  • C

    October 7, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Oh, this post totally made me smile! I love that Maya LOVES reading! I was much like her when I was a kid and I hope that Hubby and I are able to pass on our love of reading to “Junior”. Hubby already reads to my belly sometimes. Yeah, we’re starting a little early! 😉

  • Cherry

    October 7, 2008 at 11:40 pm

    I’ve never heard of any of these, but perhaps that is because I don’t have kids 🙂

    I do remember loving my Highlights, oh and Ranger Rick. And I used to read my mom’s Reader’s Digest all the time (more as I got older of course). I think I had some other pre-teen girl’s magazine too. Kinda like American Girl, but obviously not.

  • lalunas

    October 9, 2008 at 11:11 am

    I love the pictures in the children’s magazine. I remember getting the Cricket for Chee. I would read it more that she would. But then again, she was a little bit older and thought it was too babyish for her. Wrong!!!!