Old kids magazines: Get Your Nostalgia On With These Magazines From Your Youth

Posted on 5 октября, 2023 by alexxlab

Get Your Nostalgia On With These Magazines From Your Youth

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

View All posts by Kelly Jensen

Remember magazines? Sure, many still exist whether in print or online, but the heydays of print magazines has passed.

I didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but one area where my family splurged was magazines. If you found a good coupon or subscription pack, you could get a bunch of monthlies for a reasonable price. But even beyond the mail, we’d scour book sales and garage sales for old issues and grab them for a song.

Fewer and fewer subscriptions had my name on them after high school, and it wasn’t until recently I ordered a quarterly magazine. I still peruse bookstore magazine stock and haven’t been afraid to drop a chunk of change for a pile of new titles and issues to read, as well as to use for various art and craft related projects (I’m team use your reading material even for art).

My memories of a childhood in reading, though, isn’t simply in the books or the library. It’s in magazines, too. Some of them still exist, while others lived but short lives.

Let’s take a look at some of the magazines of young readers itching to take a trip through nostalgia. Below are a wide range of kid’s mags, including science titles, activity-based magazines, and some which are still alive and thriving today.

American Girl Magazine

Perhaps something I’ve never forgotten about growing up — something that absolutely made me realize how money had different meanings to different families — was that I could never have an American Girl Doll. I made friends with other kids who did, so I had plenty of time to play with Felicity and Samatha, and one Christmas, I dressed up as Samantha to celebrate.

Though the dolls were out of reach, the magazines were not.

Beginning in January 1993, the American Girl magazine was a bimonthly subscription packed with crafts, activities, advice columns, articles, and more. It targeted a female audience in that tween zone, ages 8–14, and it ran until ceasing operation in January/February 2019. What made this magazine particularly noteworthy was that it was ad free, and while it did promote the American Girl products, over the course of its life, it shifted to showcasing more stories of real American girls.

American Girl magazine in its early years also offered paper dolls in each issue, meaning that for kids like me, it was possible to own something like their dolls.

Cricket

Still in operation today, decades after it was founded in 1973, Cricket was established to be a literary journal like The New Yorker but for children. It targets that 8–14 market, publishes about nine times a year, and each of the 48-page issues showcase original art, stories, articles, and more by a wide range of creators.

Cricket‘s backlist, as well as its frontlists, showcase an incredible range of beloved talent within and beyond children’s literature. Authors like Eric Carle, Ursula Le Guin, Paul O. Zelinksky, and more have contributed.

The first literary magazine of its kind for children, Cricket inspired a number of similar publications. Many are still in print, including Cicada, Spider, and Ladybug.

Cricket features a variety of illustrations throughout that have been part of the magazine since the beginning, and each of these insects tells a story throughout the issue, as well as help annotate the issue.

Dinosaurs! Magazine

Absolutely no magazine hits my nostalgia button like Dinosaurs! does. When a new issue would arrive, my mom would drive me to the convenience store outside our neighborhood on the way to school so I could have it ready for me when I came home. Not only was I deeply invested in the dino content, each issue came with a make-able project. Building your own dinosaur? Badass.

The magazine ran for 104 issues and ended in 1995. Each issue focused on a specific dinosaur and offered up some incredible-for-the-time images of various dinos, as well as all kinds of facts about them. There were 3-D comics, facts about what dinosaurs ate, and so much more.

What’s interesting is this isn’t a U.S. magazine but rather originated in the UK, so chances are U.S. audiences didn’t get their hands on every issue. I remember only having four or five of them, but they were loved fiercely.

Highlights for Children

Launched in 1946, Highlights has always followed the mission of “fun with purpose.” There are over a billion copies of Highlights in print, and it’s among the few publications still in existence and which doesn’t utilize third-party advertisers.

The magazine reaches a younger audience of preschool through about 6th grade and each issue has loads of stories and puzzles. There are regular features in each edition, including some which have been around since nearly the magazine’s inception: Goofus and Gallant, jokes, riddles, Hidden Pictures, and What’s Wrong have encouraged children to find humor in the everyday.

Though Highlights has also introduced apps and digital content for today’s young readers, they remain print staples in homes and doctors’ offices everywhere. It’s worth noting, too, Highlights hasn’t been afraid to speak up and out about political issues, and in 2019, denounced family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

National Geographic World / National Geographic Kids

The National Geographic Society launched their National Geographic World magazine targeting children in September 1975 and it’s still in publication today under the name National Geographic Kids. Originally for classrooms, the magazine split into two separate publications, with one aimed at classrooms and one for children more broadly. There are ten issues each year, and the magazine is published for children between 6 and 14.

Though its original language is English, the magazine has nearly 20 editions that reach children across the globe in a range of languages.

It should be no surprise the focus of Nat Geo Kids is on nature and wildlife, with regular features that highlight world news, cool inventions, ways to live a more green life, and more.

Ranger Rick

I’ll never forget the time I discovered a giant box of old Ranger Rick magazines at a library book sale (or garage sale, I can’t remember that detail) and was able to bring them all home. As an ardent animal lover, the date on the issue didn’t matter: I knew I’d learn a lot of cool facts about so many different species and get to look at great photos. In the days before the internet, some of the best photography of nature was in magazines.

Ten issues per year are still being published and the magazine launched in January 1967 by the National Wildlife Federation. The intent was to encourage kids in that tween age group to learn about the outdoors and find a love for the environment.

Perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits about Ranger Rick is that so many kids come to it exactly the way I did: through old issues. Though their subscription base is robust and they have two other magazines for even younger readers (Ranger Rick Jr. and Ranger Rick Cub), it’s through old issues they find many of their new fans.

Ranger Rick himself is a cartoon raccoon who, along with some trusty woodland sidekicks, encourages kids to caring for wildlife and the environment.

Tiger Beat

I was never cool enough, hip enough, nor in touch enough to be the kind of kid who read Tiger Beat. But the magazine, which began in September 1965 and maintained its print run until December 2018, was marketed for adolescent girls who loved pop culture and celebrities. It still publishes content online.

Tiger Beat was catnip for teens who love celebrity gossip and who ached to hang their favorite heartthrobs on their bedroom walls. The magazine featured images which encouraged just that. Interestingly, until 2016, the magazine’s cover featured a collage of celebrity idols to entice young readers; after, the creators decided to instead choose a single celebrity to spotlight, noting that Gen Z preferred getting to know one person in as much depth as possible (perhaps we can thank the internet and fandom for this!).

The 1960s can brag about a number of similar tween-and-teen celebrity gossip magazines beyond Tiger Beat, including Monkee Spectacular (about, well, you know what group!) and FaVE. One of the owners of Tiger Beat was also owner of another similar magazine, Bop, which ceased operation in 2014.

Zillions

What better way to educate the youngest readers about capitalism and consumerism than via a magazine dedicated to just that? Zillions was founded in 1980 and was a children’s version of Consumer Reports.

Though it sounds like it could open up a whole host of issues, Zillions was advertisement free and sought to educate young people about budgeting and saving, included reviews of products that were advertised for children (so they could decide whether or not that was worth their money!), and it explored the ways advertisements can manipulate people into action. Kids had a hand in the development of the magazine, offering insight into the kind of content they wished to see and products they hoped would be tested, and kids were selected to test numerous products themselves.

Zillions folded in 2000.

Zoobooks

Publishing nine issues a year and still in print, Zoobooks began in 1980 as a publication from the National Wildlife Federation — indeed, the same one publishing Ranger Rick. What sets Zoobooks apart, though, is its focus on a singular animal in each issue. It’s packed with photos, facts about different species and subspecies of the cover animal, diagrams, facts, and, of course, games.

Targeting 6–12 year olds, Zoobooks has similar magazines for even younger readers.

Though the bulk of the magazines here targeted tweens in that 7–14 or so age range, teen magazines have their own fascinating histories. The Hairpin’s deep dive into the decline of teen magazines is absolutely riveting.

1960s Kids Magazines — Etsy.de

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Old children’s magazines: leninka_ru — LiveJournal

The staff of our library has a very well developed hearing. It is worth saying the magic words “RGB” or “Leninka” in any corner of LiveJournal, and sooner or later I will come there.

plyazhnikov asked all those wishing to answer: “By the way, if anyone uses libraries and can tell if, say, there are pre-revolutionary children’s periodicals in the RSL, in particular, is this position of interest?” [comic magazine for children «Children’s Laughter»]. But the friends answered is like an ash tree, a moon and a cloud in a famous song, but leninka_ru tracked down a potential reader and his question, got advice from the chief bibliographer of the RSL and prepared a selection of old magazines for children and research about them.

The chief bibliographer of the RSL Evgenia Naidina, an employee of the Virtual Information, answers:

The catalog of the RSL includes the magazine «Children’s Laughter» for 1908 (No. 1-11) and 1909 (No. 1-4). Storage code: XVI 47/19

In the electronic catalog of the RSL you can find, for example, such children’s magazines published before 1917:

1. Zhavoronok: an art-illustrated magazine for young children. Petrograd: «The Beginnings of Knowledge», 1913-[192-?].
Codes: [FB Main. storage] XX 28/14
[FB Main. storage] XX 28/6
[FB Main. stored] Рb 21/444

2. Children’s world: bi-weekly fiction and literary magazine for family and school. Moscow: Moscow publishing house, 1907-1915.
Codes: [FB Main. stored] XVI 35/10
[FB Main. kept] XVI 35/57

3. Labor and fun: illustrated children’s magazine of work and entertainment. St. Petersburg: A.F. Sukhova, 1906-[19—?]. The publication comes with an appendix.
Codes: [FB Main. stored] XVI 72/4

4. Mirok : monthly illustrated children’s magazine for family and elementary school. Moscow: I.D. Sytin Partnership, 1902-1917.
Codes: [FB Main. storage] XX 48a/2
[FB Main. storage] XX 500/4

5. Children’s rest: [monthly illustrated magazine]. St. Petersburg: E.V. Lavrova, 1881-1907.
Codes: [FB Main. storage] X 45/3
[FB Main. stored] XV 8/8

6. Magazine for children’s reading. Moscow: Blagovo, 1874. 120 p. No title page.
Codes: [FB Main. stored] E 78/133
[MFK (Nagatino)] 801-13/503

7. Young Russia: monthly illustrated magazine for family and school. Moscow: E.N. Tikhomirova, 1869–1918.
Codes: [FB Main. storage] VII 20/1
[FB Main. stored] XX 461/23 (2nd copy)
[FB Osn. storage] Rb 11/325
[FB Main. stored] Рb 11/326

For a more in-depth search, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the indexes:

1. Kholmov, Mikhail Ivanovich. Bibliographic index of Russian periodicals for children (1785-1917). Leningrad, 1973. 19 p.
Codes: [CSB] CSB
[FB Main. storage] Arch
[FB Main. storage] Br 203/340

2. Kholmov, Mikhail Ivanovich. Russian children’s journalism: (1875-1917): Index of materials. Leningrad, 1978. 71 p.
Codes: [CSB] CSB
[FB Main. kept] B 78-51/669
[MK Book Museum] MK

3. Belyaeva, Lusia Nikitichna. Bibliography of periodicals in Russia: 1901-1916. Volume 4. Pointers. [Leningrad], 1961. 396 p.
Codes: [KB (OBL)] 016:05 B-44

You may also be interested in the following publications:

1. Kornilova, Vera Vladimirovna. Children’s illustrated magazines in the artistic life of St. Petersburg XIX — the first half of the XX century : Typology and evolution: dissertation … Candidate of Art History: 17.00.04. St. Petersburg, 2002. 286 p.
Codes: [Department of diss. (Khimki)] 61 03-17/69-7
Read the first 28 pages of the dissertation

2. Kornilova, Vera Vladimirovna. Artistic design of Russian children’s illustrated magazines in the first third of the twentieth century (St. Petersburg–Leningrad, Moscow): [Proceedings of the Biographical Institute «Studio Biographica»]. St. Petersburg: Biographic Studio, 1994. 32 p.
Codes: [FB Main. stored] 3 03-28/689-5

3. About magazines for children’s reading : [Review]. Moscow: Children’s Library of M.V. Berednikova, 1914. 134 p.
Codes: [FB Main. storage] A 107/343
[FB Main. stored] V 22/484

4. Vasilievsky, M.N. Do children need a children’s magazine. St. Petersburg; Moscow: T-vo M.O. Wolf, 1911 (St. Petersburg. 23 p. (Intimate education. Collection of popular essays, lectures and articles on pedagogical issues / Edited by Viktor Rusakov; 15).
Codes: [FB Main storage] C 29/313
[FB Main storage] U 67/468

5. 90 003 Savvin, Nikolai Arsenievich (1878-1934) Experience of the Yearbook of Children’s Literature : Children’s Literature and Journalism… Moscow: Editorial Board of the Pedagogical Leaflet, 1910-1916 (Teacher’s Library) Section at the end of the text: Systematic list of books reviewed in the «Experience of the Yearbook of Children’s Literature»
… for 1908–1915.
Codes: [FB Main. storage] M 239/103
[FB Main. storage] R 21/387

For further work — we invite you to the library.

A the collection «Yolka» edited by Chukovsky and Benoit, which was called the last book for the children of old Russia by reference, has been digitized.

You ask, ask. You can in our comments, you can in your journals. You now know the magic formula for calling a team of bibliographers home.

Make friends with Leninka mutually

The history of children’s newspapers and magazines in Russia

In developed civilizations, children are seen as the future change, they are hoped as people who have to create the future, to achieve what previous generations failed to achieve. Of course, for this, children and adolescents need to be developed. The school and their parents give most of the knowledge to children, now the Internet has been added to them. But over the past two centuries, the main assistant to the school (which was optional until the twentieth century) and parents (who did not always have enough time) in the development of the younger generation was the children’s media. Life has studied the path that children’s Russian-language media have descended.

The first domestic publication specifically for a children’s audience was the magazine «Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind» , the pilot issue dates back to 1785. The magazine was published by Nikolai Novikov, one of the most prominent figures in the education of the Catherine era.

The content of the magazine was so solid that not every modern adult can master it. It published translations of the most popular European authors writing for children, such as the Comtesse de Genlis.

A lot of educational materials were published: about the nervous system, about human anatomy, about animals, essays by travelers with descriptions of distant countries, excerpts from Contemplation de la nature («Contemplation of Nature») by the famous naturalist and philosopher Charles Bonnet, materials from «Practical Philosophy», etc. The young Karamzin, who later became the editor of the publication, published his first literary experiments in the journal.

The magazine was published every week as a free supplement to Moskovsky Vedomosti and enjoyed such popularity that many decades later, some well-known figures of the empire remembered it as the main event of childhood.

The famous surgeon Pirogov recalled that he read the magazine more than any adventure book popular with his peers, and the most famous literary critic of his generation, Vissarion Belinsky, sincerely lamented that the children of his contemporaries did not have such a wonderful magazine. To describe the level of this publication, it is enough to say that the advice «How to avoid a quarrel» was reprinted almost unchanged a century and a half later in Soviet journals.

The magazine differed from all subsequent ones in that it was conceptual, that is, it was not a collection of scattered stories and stories for children, but formed a certain worldview of a citizen in young readers, unobtrusively instilling in him the necessary qualities for this.

Many children’s magazines appeared in the 19th century. Some of them lasted only two or three years, others came out for decades and left a noticeable mark on history. Magazines began to be divided into target audiences: for the smallest, for older teenagers, for girls.

The most famous magazine for small children in the middle of that century was Zvezdochka published by Ishimova. It published historical materials, new stories by popular authors, informative «Fragments from Natural History». Some of the materials were presented in a form accessible to young readers: in the form of conversations with mothers, elderly people, etc. Advice was also given on proper behavior: how to welcome guests, why a mess in a room is bad. The magazine has been published for more than 20 years, becoming one of the main centenarians of its time.

Ishimova also published Russia’s first magazine «for girls» — «Luchi» . In addition to sentimental and moralizing stories, it published a mass of ethnographic materials about the customs and customs of the peoples inhabiting distant countries. Appeared in the middle of the XIX century «New Children’s Library» was almost a full-fledged scientific magazine for children. In addition to the mass of materials on astronomy, geography, ethnography, translations of the Iliad and The Tale of Bygone Years were published there.

For some time, «Snowdrop» competed with Ishimova’s magazines, bringing together a star staff in the editorial office: Nekrasov, Turgenev, Maikov. The magazine was distinguished by the fact that it published translations not only of foreign fairy tales, but also of Shakespeare.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, children’s magazines experienced a real boom. On the eve of the revolution, about a hundred different children’s publications were published in the country — printing technologies became more accessible. The most popular pre-revolutionary magazine — «Sincere Word» — published for half a century. It published not only educational materials, works of art and historical essays, but also letters from readers.

Almost all the magazines of that time did not survive the revolution: some closed themselves due to problems with paper and finances, others were closed by the new authorities, who viewed them as ideologically hostile because they preached «bourgeois morality».

After the end of the Civil War, the state made it a priority task to educate a new generation according to the precepts of Marxism. In the 20-30s, a lot of new magazines appeared for various age categories: «Murzilka», «Chizh», «Hedgehog», «Technique of Youth» — some of them still exist.

Children’s literature became a place of attraction for many writers and poets who did not fit into the narrow framework of socialist realism that triumphed in Soviet literature. For some of them, this was the only opportunity to print. Kharms, Zabolotsky, Oleinikov published in children’s magazines.

Many newspapers for teenagers appeared: Pionerskaya Pravda, Znamya Pionera etc. Almost all children’s publications were extremely politicized, especially in the 1930s. In form, they largely repeated pre-revolutionary publications, but differed greatly from them in content. Fairy tales and romantic stories were replaced by stories about how the pioneers heroically caught a spy who wanted to blow up a factory or set fire to a collective farm — and only the vigilance of the pioneers helped prevent the tragedy.

Much space was devoted to international politics: solidarity with the working people of the capitalist colonies, the struggle for the rights of Polish communists, reports from the Chinese and Spanish fronts, and so on.

A small space was devoted to entertaining materials: how to glue a toy tank out of a matchbox or other improvised means, for example. At the height of the repression, teenagers were asked directly through the magazines to increase class vigilance and expose spies and double-dealers-traitors. It is especially worth noting the letters of the pioneers with thanks to the people’s commissars who punish the vile Trotskyist hirelings:

— Dear Nikolai Ivanovich! Yesterday we read in the newspapers the verdict on a pack of right-wing Trotskyist spies and murderers. We would like to say a big pioneer thanks to you and all the sharp-sighted Commissars of Internal Affairs [NKVD]. Thank you, Comrade Yezhov, for capturing a gang of lurking fascists who wanted to take away our happy childhood. Thank you for crushing and destroying these snake nests. We kindly ask you to take care of yourself. After all, the snake-Berry tried to sting you. Your life and health are needed by our country and by us, the Soviet guys. We strive to be as bold, vigilant, implacable towards all the enemies of the working people as you are, dear comrade Yezhov.

— With great joy we learned about the verdict of the Soviet court to the right-wing Trotskyist gang. We, the pupils of the Slavic Children’s Town, promise to increase our vigilance and help Soviet intelligence to smash the enemies of the people, — echoed them Murashova, Lyakhovenko and Kopytets.

With the end of the Stalin era, Soviet publications for children began to resemble pre-revolutionary ones more. The ideological pressure somewhat weakened, instead of socialist realism, fairy tales for the smallest and fantastic stories for older ages began to return.

Children’s magazines were also read by adults, because some of them published stories by famous foreign science fiction writers and Soviet writers, which were not published in large numbers for ideological reasons. «Technology for Youth» not only popularized science, but also published well-known science fiction, thanks to which it outgrew the level of a teenage magazine — adults also read it with pleasure.

As after the revolution of 1917, most of the old magazines did not fit into the new society of the split USSR. But if at the beginning of the century some of them had to be closed by administrative methods, now they simply failed to find their place in the market. Some of the publications with the loudest brands survived, but were forced to completely reduce the circulation.

In its best years «The Young Naturalist» was published in 4 million copies, now its circulation does not exceed 20 thousand. «Technique for Youth», which was published on the eve of the collapse of the USSR with a circulation of 2 million copies, despite the support of the state, could not overcome the milestone of 50 thousand. Developing magazines have been preserved, but only in the format «for the smallest», that is, for children under 8-10 years old.

At the same time, it cannot be said that teenagers have completely stopped reading. Despite competition from TV and the Internet, until recently, entertaining teenage magazines were published in circulation many times higher than the circulation of publications that have survived from Soviet times (hundreds of thousands of copies).

However, the price for this was a complete rejection of the scientific and educational component and a total transition to entertainment. The topics of most youth magazines that have existed in the past 20 years are the life of show business stars, fashion, sexual relations. New magazines spoke to teenagers in their language, abandoned edification and moralizing, and, in fact, replaced parents who did not dare to speak frankly with their grown-up children.

Now that the «diet» and social networks are already like adults, it’s hard to imagine a magazine — in whatever country it comes out — that will publish excerpts from the classics. The tastes of readers have changed, their number, society itself is very different from the times of two hundred years ago.

Surely an important and necessary function is to talk to teenagers in their language, to be understandable and interesting to them. But the transition from the publications of Shakespeare and Homer to modern content is a real degradation, the difference between them is so great. This process was not swift, the path from practical philosophy to the discussion of the color of the underpants of a popular performer took two hundred years. Only the fact that this process is observed everywhere and not a single country has managed to avoid it can reassure.