"About ten years ago," says Author-Critic Clifton Fadiman, 69, "I began to get less interested in grownups and more interested in children." A lifelong addict-pusher of good reading for adults (Book-of-the-Month Club judge, author of The Lifetime Reading Plan), Fadiman has now set out to hook the grade-school crowd. From his hilltop home in Santa Barbara, where he is also preparing a critical history of children's literature, Fadiman is editing a brisk new magazine called Cricket.
Billed as the first literary magazine for children since the famed St. Nicholas faded away in the '30s, Cricket (price: $1.25 per issue) mercifully does not...