On a recent Saturday afternoon, I noticed an unusual silence from my 9-year-old’s room. I was surprised to find she wasn’t taking advantage of her allotted two hours of screen time; instead, she was curled up on her chair reading a magazine. Three decades ago, when I was her age, this wouldn’t have seemed strange. Starting in the late 1800s, the United States had a thriving culture around children’s magazines. Young children would get Jack and Jill, Turtle, or Sesame Street Magazine in the mail; teens would graduate to Sassy, Tiger Beat, or Teen People. But as the internet emerged—with blogs, streaming sites, and online games competing for young people’s attention—magazines lost their luster.
