Children's magazine

In the current times of advancing technology and gizmos, the children are losing interest in reading magazines and story books. The hitherto leisure reading habits are increasingly being replaced by television watching, video games and other types of indoors activities and which are adversely affecting the all round development of children’s personality. The need to promote and inculcate reading habits, have become major concern for the teachers, librarians and the elders. Therefore, a general survey of libraries and bookstores were conducted to find the types of magazines and books that are available for the children and young adults in their early teens and their strategic display. The idea was to find whether the books and their display are able to fascinate the targeted readers and promote reading.
During the survey, it was found that the libraries do have wide variety of books for children of different age groups but there is significant lack of children’s magazines and whatever few magazines are there, they do not attract the children. Children’s section is normally well segregated but lack of imagination, in the display of the titles, are found to be the main reason for disinterest amongst the children and the teens. The libraries make no efforts to apply creative approach to promote better reading.
The bookstores like Waterstones and W. H. Smith have a huge selection of children’s magazines and story books which are prominently displayed. They often organize special events for children to promote children’s books which do make some headway in inculcating reading habits in children. The bookstores, too, have a separate section for the children where latest story books are attractively displayed. Unfortunately, the price factor is a big deterrent for the majority of the children who prefer to spend that much money on latest gadgets and audio-video games!
The children need to develop reading habits for various reasons and the most important justification being that it hugely widens their knowledge horizon which becomes their greatest asset in the later life. To attract children towards reading, it is important that they be introduced to the pleasures of reading in a manner that makes it a big fun and which sufficiently prods their inherent curiosity so that they seek more interesting information in the books. It is also important that the government must encourage writers for writing children’s books and magazines that are interesting, fun filled and which satisfy interest level of children of different age groups.
The following five types of leisure reading is recommended for children as they offer great entertainment and at the same time, are a treasure house of information.
1. Agee, Jon. (2005) Terrific. New York: Hyperion Books.
2. Bang, Molly. (2004). When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry. New York: Scholastic Books
3. Durant, Alan. (2004) Always and Forever. Debi Glori [Ill]. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
4. Simot, Marc. (2001) Stray Dog. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
5. Willems, Mo. (2004) Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale. New York: Hyperion Books for Children.
Reference
The survey was conducted in the following places;
Libraries
http://www. suffolk. gov. uk/LeisureAndCulture/Libraries/ChildrensLibrary/
http://www. sutton. gov. uk/leisure/childrenleisureguide/kidslibrary. htm
Bookstores
Waterstone’s
http://www. waterstones. com/waterstonesweb/home. do
W. H. Smith
http://www. whsmith. co. uk/Books. aspx