Once upon a time there were many magazines for children, and they featured such artful writers as Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens. But today's children are too distracted by television to sit down and read. Right? Wrong. In the past two years alone, the number of children's publications tracked by the Educational Press Association of America has nearly doubled, from 85 to 160, bringing their total circulation to an impressive 40 million. Says Don Stoll, executive director of the EPAA: "There has been extraordinary activity in children's periodicals."
It is not difficult to figure out why. Concern over illiteracy and the...