valuable data about the interests, tastes, and preferences of today’s children. Therefore,
periodicals can play an important role in shaping the way societies look at and interact
with their youngest members.
Most children’s magazines also provide a vital creative outlet for their young readers—
a chance for children to explore the world of the arts firsthand. A great majority of
children’s magazines sponsor creative writing, drawing, or other contests and encourage
children’s efforts by publishing the prize-winning contributions. Such contests provide
many children with their only chance of exercising and developing their natural writing
or other artistic abilities. Young authors and illustrators regard their work for children’s
magazines as an important part of their creative development, and many already
established authors and artists welcome periodicals as a way to showcase their work for
thousands and often millions of children.
The 1990 exhibit of quality children’s periodicals from all over the world on the
occasion of the 22nd IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Congress in
Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, was the first of its kind in the history of children’s
literature. Organised by Cricket magazine, the exhibit consisted of 280 magazines from
fifty-five nations, an excellent and solid international representation. The great variety of
quality children’s magazines collected for the exhibit, and the diversity of editorial goals
and missions showed only too clearly what an important part children’s periodicals have
played and are still playing in each country’s history of children’s literature—a part just
as important as the development of children’s book publishing.
The best contemporary magazines keep an important balance between education,
information, and entertainment. A magazine has to be fun and offer features that excite
children’s interest immediately. However, if there is just entertainment and no stories or
articles of literary substance, magazines become throwaways like comic books.
Unfortunately after the Second World War many countries throughout the world were
flooded with American and French comics. Many literary magazines that had flourished
in these countries ceased publication with the advent of these strip features. The Second
World War and other wars and revolutions had other far-reaching effects on the
development of children’s magazines, often changing ownership, editorial mission, and
content.
The number of children’s magazines is steadily growing despite great economic
difficulties all over the world, and quality magazines everywhere have become powerful
tools in starting young people on an inspiring and most rewarding lifetime of reading.
EuropeAustriaMost of the Austrian quality children’s magazines are membership or club magazines.
They are Freundschaft [Friendship], Jungösterreich [Young Austria], Kleines Volk [Little
People], Panda Club, and Spatzenpost [Sparrow Post]. These magazines are widely used
in schools.
Then there are independent magazines like Topic (11–16) with stories about politics,
social and cultural affairs, science, and the environment, and general-interest
CHILDREN’S MAGAZINES 439