Trumpeting elephants, roaring lions, chattering monkeys, and screeching birds greeted parents, administrators, students, and teachers at the McCulloch Middle School’s Reading Safari last May.  Were they in cages?  Were they roaming the halls ready to devour any who dared enter?  No!  These creatures—and many of the two-legged kind—were in magazines and books.

McCulloch Middle School students and students from Professor Wenda Clement’s children’s literature class at Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) participated in a Reading Safari.  Parents, middle school students, IWU students, and teachers shared their favorite books and magazines as students moved from station to station during the evening.  

Where did we get the idea?  Many of McCulloch’s parents are very interested in reading and are always looking for ways to promote reading in the school.  The Reading Safari idea surfaced and the excitement grew.  Principal Joselyn Whitticker, parents, teachers, and school librarian Artis Hoffmann met one evening to discuss and plan the event.

Important to us in executing the Reading Safari was a collaboration with IWU education students taking the children’s literature class.  We wanted to share magazines as well as favorite books.

Parents, students, teachers, principal, school librarian, and IWU students and their professor converged on the school cafeteria on the designated evening.  (As an aside, we would have preferred meeting in the library, but the location on the third floor makes meeting in the library impractical.)  We had tables set up where guest readers and students stationed themselves.  The guest reader shared his or her favorite reading materials or stories and invited others to share.

 Each student was encouraged to bring a book, in good physical condition, and then choose one book to take home.  A gift bag with pencils, bookmarks, a book, and other related reading items was given to each student.  Refreshments rounded out the evening.

 The university students had great fun.  Those who volunteered to share are great readers.  They love books and magazines.  They love kids of all ages.  Their enthusiasm was contagious.  Photographs taken of the different groups captured young people captivated by the sharing.  The room buzzed with enthusiastic voices.  Questions bombarded guest readers.  Students asked many good questions about other books by the same author and other books on the same subject.  We, as did the university students, took copies of our favorites with us so that as we shared, students could see and handle our reading materials.  Students could be seen with pencil and paper writing down titles and authors.  One of the university students featured a favorite author with stacks of books and a printed bibliography he gave to all who came to his table.  Reading Safari was an exciting program we plan to repeat in spring 2002.  

    “What many educators now have begun to realize is that reading is reading, whether you’re using a textbook, a cookbook, a comic book, a newspaper, or a magazine. The only way to get better at it is by doing it.  How do we get children to read more?  By tying the act to their interests.  With the variety now available in publishing and with guides like this one in your hand, that’s the easy part—connecting a music fan, a gymnast, a computer whiz, or a Scout to the appropriate magazine.

“Real literacy is more caught than taught.  Most of the time we’re unaware the catching is taking place.  The same rules for grammar, spelling, and punctuation exist in magazines as in textbooks.  The difference usually is that magazines you enjoy reading, textbooks you endure reading.  But as the parade of words and sentences fly by your eyes and make minuscule connections throughout your brain, you are observing and absorbing how and when to use a certain word or punctuation.  Call it ‘copycat learning.’”

School Crossings, an online site, says:  “When kids balk at reading a book, they may be enticed into reading a magazine instead, because it is shorter, more accessible, glitzier, and has the feeling of being up-to-the-minute that books don’t always have.  Just as older readers will turn to a magazine for a break, to while away time in the dentist’s office, etc., so younger readers can and will read shorter pieces in magazines.”

Traditional sources for magazine titles include Donald Stoll’s Magazines for Kids and Teens and Bill Katz’s Magazines for Young People.  

    We would like to see more student work being published in magazines, because they provide an excellent outlet for creative writers.  There are many that will publish student work. 

A good starting place for publication, however, is your local newspaper.  As a result of a Community of Readers grant from the Middle Grades Reading Network that provided the resources for a committee of middle school teachers to brainstorm, middle school students in the Marion schools already experience the thrill of seeing their names in print.  Teachers submit selected pieces from students for publication on a weekly basis in the local newspaper.

We want to continue investigating additional ways to collaborate with university education students, who can work side by side with middle school students as they research, write, rewrite, edit, and submit for publication.

Introducing students to resources that list magazines that publish the work of young writers can be very useful.  Two such resources are:

1.  All potential young contributors must realize that magazines publish work that is of value to the magazine’s readership. The secret is to submit good work within the magazine’s guidelines.

2.  To determine whether work is likely to be accepted, look through your browsing copies to see what type of writing those magazines publish. 

3.  Editors will tell potential contributors that the best way to know what the magazine wants is to look at the content f the magazine.  Are the letters, poems, and drawings tied to the theme of the issue?  Are the letters long or short?  What kinds of jokes do the editors think their readers will enjoy?

4.  Many magazines use writer’s guidelines to tell potential contributors what they are looking for.  These may be requested directly from the editor.

5.  Don’t get discouraged.  It is never the contributor who is rejected; it is the contribution.  Each new piece of work is a new opportunity.  Try other publications as well.

6.  Use Magazines for Kids and Teens to discover new outlets for contributions. Many of the publications accept contributors’ work.  Those with small circulation or with limited geographical distribution may not get as many contributions as larger, more established magazines, and these could be good magazines to try.

Kids love computers and the Internet.  Use the Internet to hook students on reading magazines.  Several can be found full-text or nearly full-text online.  Web sites are included below.

Collaboration among parents, teachers, students, and universities is very important, but what better way to encourage reading magazines than to inspire students to write for them?  Who knows?  Their letters or stories might make the pages of Highlights and reach three million readers throughout the world!