'The brand new brilliant magazine for bright children' Good or bad idea?

[tigermoth]

Flyer in my 6 year old son's bookbag -

'CY - The brand new brilliant magazine for bright children - 1st issue out 20 July.'

So are we to assume that the publishers think modern children's comics are too dumbed down for the target market?

Blurb follows:
*
'The most entertaining and absorbing monthly magazine for 7 - 12 year olds.

What makes CY so different?
It is full of intelligent and entertaining features on subjects your childern will really enjoy

Its puzzles and challenges will stimulate higher order thinking skills such as logic and creativity. It will stretch young minds and get them really thinking.

It will extend your child's knowledge beyond the National Curriculum.

Its packed with brilliant stories, activities, puzzles, fascts, competitions, reviews comic strips and all sorts of exciting things for them to do and make.

It got a website www.cyclub.co.uk that apparently 'acts as a motivator for completing challenges with a starpoint league table to win prizes.

It's all a bit far from the Beano isn't it?
Will there be a sister comic for stupid kids?
Is Cy too elitist (have to admit their tag line - brilliant magazine for bright kids made me gag)
Or is CY fulfilling a real need - making a stand against naughty kid comics like 'Toxic' to show that learning is fun and cool.

Discuss....

I like the Economist ads because they do it with humour, but there was one terrible one about 'buy this magazine so you have something to talk about if you find yourself sitting on a plane next to Kissinger'. I know what I'd want to talk about, and it wouldn't be the effing Economist...

Trefusis - you're the first person I've heard of whose children are also reading First News.

I bought a subscription before it was launched, and before seeing a copy (in a pushy parent sort of way, thinking it would be a "worthy" publication!) The boys absolutely love it - on a Friday they squabble after school over who gets to read it first!
And I have to admit it is better for not being as I imagined it would be

My dd has been getting Aquila for approx 2 years now and I can thoroughly recommend it for its wide variety of articles. dd's school also stocks it in the school library.

The whole point of comics is that the child chooses them. Too many of kids books are bought for the kids, not chosen by them, and thus go unread.

As for it being for "bright" kids, I find that 2 of the 3 stories on the front page of the website are about sport. The text of these is not only less entertaining than the sports coverage of the Sun, but less demanding.

Nothing on science, the arts, history or current events. It's drivel.

Even if it had been done properly, it's an idea whose time has past. We guide our G&T 5 you at websites that allow him to explore, stretch and have fun at the same time.
Unless you're relgious, you may want to consider Www.wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia that allows an inquiring mind to wander from Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds to an overview of Switzerland's military neutrality in a few clicks. Well hyperlinked, so your child can follow his nose, and find out the meaning of anything he doesn't yet understand.
There was a nasty spat last year when it was discovered that it was both more reliable and vastly borader than the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Britannica's people threw their toys out of their pram big time.

I've just bought flipside for my 11yo, I'm very impressed with it, has a science background, but lots of 'groovy stuff' in it, like real life spy equipment within the stormbreaker article.

www.flipside.org.uk/

It's only £2.50, with a good couple of hours reading in it. Like a glossy mag for boys (and girls).Got mine at a larger tesco shop.

First News seems properly done.
But...
It's a tricky one about censorship.
1N gives content that parents will regard as "suitable" for kids. That means losing controversial things.
When we take DS to school on the tube he reads bits of The Times. My wife had a deeply smug moment when 5YO DS was reading aloud the part that many English kids don't learn to read properly by 11 and others on the train noticed

The Times is hardly a stream of porn and violence but it contains coverage of bad things happening, some sexual matters and various wrongdoings of various racial and relgious groups.
He has developed "views" on George Bush, and now feels able to argue with us about the environment.

He's hardly a political hack, but all this begs the question of what 1N is for ?
I'm all for any reading matter they find interesting, since there is always the danger that school may lead them to think of reading as a chore.

Is 1N educational ?
It covers things he doesn't do at school, and most news TV is so badly done, he find most of it as boring as I do.
But to me "education" isn't the assimilation of lists of facts, it's working things out. That means a certain degree of controversy, and multiple points of view. It also means telling kids things their parents aren't comfortable for them to hear.

I agree but only up to a point DC.

My boys (7 and 9) are extremely good readers, but they are still children, and there is little appealing to them in the format and layout of The Times, so they will not choose to browse through it to find the odd article that appeals to them. We do often show them articles they might be interested in, which they then enjoy.

But First News is designed for children. Mine still fight over it when it arrives, and we've been getting it ever since it was launched. And through choosing to read it, they are learning 'newspaper reading skills' - browsing, skimming, flicking through headlines and pictures, etc.

I'm also happy for my boys to have censored news. They enjoy Newsround, but I would not be happy for them to be watching adult news at this age. I'm happy for form their own opinions, and disagree with us on issues; but there are some issues they don't need to know about yet.

DD7 loves First news, have subscribed since launch. It's like a printed version of Newsround. She keeps stories she's liked / interested in and when the next paper arrives, cuts up the old one and sticks bits in her scrap book. I noticed two competitions were both aimed at 11/12 year olds in last weeks edition and thought that perhaps First News many be a bit young for children of that age. I belive it aims at children between 7 and 10 and we will be renewing our sub when the time comes.

Seems to me that if 1N is read, then it pretty much hits my filter for being good.

I was struck recently by the contents of a local bookshop, around 15% of it was bibles. Seems to me that a relgious kid will already has a bible, and if she doesn't then odds are she doesn't need to be bought 7.
Made me realise that nearly all childrens books are bought for kids not by kids.
The downside of that is a distinct "worthiness" to books.
To be sure I oike it when 2.0 picks up a book of puzzles or science or the dozens of worthy books cunningly planted around the house.
But there is the danger of boring them, and that's not just pushing them to things that are good rather than interesting, it's also stupidly hard to guesss what they will enjoy.
My 2 year old's favourite book is a DK "Visual Encyclopedia" of all the gadgets and aliens in Star Wars 2. He has contrived a view of the world where Darth Vader is "potato man" and is a good pirate. He likes aliens, all aliens, the more heads the better.
One of my godchildren refuses point blank to read any fiction, and I'm not sure his mother is ready to try my remedy of giving him access to my 2,700 volume SciFi collection.
That's just two kids, so second guessing their reading preferences is doomed.

Who has tried their kids on Wikipedia ?

That's good, however library borrowing rates are declining sadly, and both school & public libraries have books chosen by adults.
This isn't that terrible, just risks some kids seeing reading as boring.

DS(12) can't stop reading. The other day while in a bookshop, I suggested he use his pocket money to buy a book he wanted. He said "I have never in my life bought a book with my own money" - he always uses mine/mum's.

His school suggested he try reading a wider range (not just DiscWorld and other sci-fi). I give him stuff from the bookshelves like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Scoop, The Wasp Factory. DW keeps worrying whether they are suitable....

I know what you mean ClerkKent. DS3 (13)is an avid book reader and always has been. He is a "Bookpusher" for our local authority, which basically involves encouraging other kids to read more books. He does frequent reviews, presentations and visits other schools in the county. He gets to meet authors and gets copies of books before they are published (free!). He has regular meetings with other "Bookpushers" and they discuss the latest books. He also contributes to the NAGTY online book group.

DS1 (9) buys his own books, using his pocket money which he's saved up. Of course we buy him books too, but if he wants the latest book by his favourite author on the day it is published (which he does), then he buys it himself. Alternatively he can wait a few weeks and order it through the library; or he can wait until a birthday or Christmas and he might get it as a present.

He got into this habit I guess through getting book tokens regularly for Christmas and birthdays.

Now he quite often buys books that we want to read too
So he paid for the latest Artemis Fowl book when it came out