While reading bedtime stories to a two year-old from Highlights’ Hello magazine and recalling similar stories in Cobblestone’s Baby Bug, it occurred to me that, on the media content spectrum, these periodicals are indistinguishable from books at this preschool reading age – but their power is multiplied by monthly arrival in hands and homes with fresh stories and illustrations throughout the entire year. I also realized that, from the vantage point of a two year-old, they are long-form storytelling.
The next day, I was catching up on some magazine reading myself with Brad Stone’s The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store in Bloomberg Businessweek, and was awestruck when the two year-old turned to me and uttered “what are you reading?”
In that instant, in the wide eyes and formative mind of a fellow reader and world citizen, I saw a bright fiber optic thread coursing through Hello, Baby Bug, and Bloomberg Businessweek magazines. It underscored for me the importance of “getting out of the building” and into the field with magazine readers of all ages – to discover and understand how to best build upon our magnificent literacy work. It also illustrated the power of magazines in the “home literacy environment (HLE)” to create positive impressions for young people that will contribute to formation of reading as a habit.
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How a two year-old nailed the power of magazines for literacy in four words
