Our Favorite Magazines for Kids

Strategist senior editor Winnie Yang’s almost-10-year-old daughter, Andie — as well as Trolio’s 10-year-old daughter, Eliza, and my first-grader, Augie — all love The Week, Junior, a current-events weekly. Even my preschooler likes flipping through it with his brother. Yang’s daughter especially looks forward to getting it each week; she “runs up to me to show me things in it while she’s reading it,” Yang says.

Kazoo is geared toward girls ages 5 to 12 and covers science, art, comics, games, crafts, recipes, stories, and more, featuring expert contributors like Misty Copeland, Tammy Duckworth, and Shonda Rhimes. The quarterly magazine is based in Brooklyn and printed in Burlington, Vermont; it’s also entirely ad-free. The latest issue is the “Drawing” issue and includes advice from Alison Bechdel. Yang’s daughter read Kazoo until she was about 8 years old and liked that she could interact with it and “edit the pictures.” Trolio’s 10-year-old also enjoys it, particularly for its craft-project ideas — “over the summer she spent an entire afternoon building a working gumball machine out of cardboard, based on some instructions she found in Kazoo,” Trolio says.

Here’s another magazine for the art-inclined child, this one published by McSweeney’s and also recommended by Yang. “Illustoria, true to its name, focuses primarily on creativity through drawings, illustrations, and comics with a smattering of other things — stories, interviews and profiles, DIY projects, recipes — that kind of take a backseat to the visuals,” says Yang. “It’s one of the most beautiful periodicals for kids out there, though it’s possibly too nice looking, since Andie has not drawn on, colored, or cut up any of its pages like she has with Kazoo.” Trolio is gifting an Illustoria subscription to 10-year-old Eliza this Christmas.

For tweens and teens, Anyway is a nice option that Yang’s and Trolio’s daughters both enjoy. The magazine covers topics like school and street style, teen Olympic athletes, explainers about pimples (with an accompanying skin-care guide), braces, the importance of sleep, thrifting, astrology, recipes, profiles of teens around the world, and more. “It’s pretty positive in tone and diverse in representation and topics,” says Yang. Trolio’s daughter counts Anyway among her favorites and has introduced many of her friends to it, as well. “One of the best things about it that she really seems to relate to,” Trolio adds, “is that, because it contains stories about kids her own age, I think it is really helping her understand her own place world a little more.”

Yang’s and Trolio’s girls have each read a few issues of Honest History, a history quarterly for ages 6 through 12. (You can subscribe for a year to receive each new issue as it publishes, or opt to receive a bundle of three issues of your choosing arrive every three months.) More booklike than a magazine, each themed issue is filled with longer stories and can be a little dense, which Trolio’s daughter notes is not her preference at bedtime when she wants to read something a little snackier. The latest issue, “Under the Microscope,” is all about the history of medicine and includes a Q&A with Nobel laureate Dr. Jennifer Doudna on CRISPR technology. Past issues have covered the French Revolution; robots, AI, and technology; and the history of Korea.

LEGO magazine is free and comes five times a year, but it’s basically a catalogue. Still, “nothing can top it in our house,” says New York Magazine deputy editor Alexis Swerdloff, whose kids are 7 and almost 4 years old. Yang’s daughter loves it too.

A subscription to the kid imprint of National Geographic is an obvious slam dunk for nature lovers and the generally curious. Yang is considering subscribing soon.

The National Wildlife Federation publishes three different versions of Ranger Rick: Ranger Rick Cub for kids up to age 4; Ranger Rick Jr. for ages 4 to 7; and Ranger Rick for ages 7 and up. Strategist senior editor Liza Corsillo is thinking about Cub for her 3-year-old son.

Yang is also curious about Oyla, a monthly science magazine that has an imprint for ages 8 and up as well as one for for ages 12 and up. Every 100-page issue features stories about nature and space, games and brain teasers, easy experiments, and beautiful illustrations.

Strategist writer Kitty Guo remembers loving Stone Soupas a little kid. Made by kids for kids, it’s been around since 1973 and features art and writing from children from over 40 different countries.

Mishou is another recommendation from Guo and features artwork from readers 15 and under. It’s published by Dizzy Books and is currently accepting submissions for its sixth issue on the theme of “edible storytelling.” The fifth issue, which is all about food, includes guest contributors like Angela Dimayuga and the Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont.

Mildew isn’t aimed at kids, per se, but Guo recommends it for a tween or teen who is into thrifting. “They have lots of fun features from all over the world, like photo series on flea markets in India, a guide to secondhand shopping in Tokyo, astrological signs as thrift-store paperbacks, plus personal essays and interviews with prolific thrifters,” Guo says, noting that the design is fun and really colorful. “I grew up devouring American Girl magazine and Teen Vogue and I’m really sad that options for physical media for this current generation seems to be lacking,” Guo adds, “so I’m really pushing the agenda of getting kids to read independent magazines.”

Trolio is also thinking about subscribing her daughters to Aquila, a U.K.-based publication that bills itself as a magazine full of “big ideas for inquisitive kids.” There are 12 issues a year that cover a wide range of topics, from the Titanic to Greek myths to the human brain.

And finally, once you’ve cultivated their appreciation for the printed periodical, you might want to start hoarding your New Yorker back issues for them to read down the line. “I have this dream of when Andie (and my 2.5-year-old, Apollo) are in high school that I’ll bookmark New Yorker articles for them and we’ll discuss them over dinner,” says Yang, who got the idea from the father of a student she tutored many years ago. Tuber, a native New Yorker who currently lives in Los Angeles, is also stealing this move. “I did just re-up my New Yorker subscription, and even though my daughter is not reading them, I feel like it’s very important for her to at least see them around the house so she knows her ancestral roots,” Tuber says.