Ask

Ask is an informative, high quality magazine for children that engages them as readers and learners. Since each issue is devoted to a particular theme, my students gain indepth information about a variety of topics. They are fascinated by the attractive format -which includes wonderful photographs, illustrations, and graphic aids that are appropriate for young readers. My students have eagerly written letters to the editor and entered the bi-monthly contests. I highly recommend Ask as an excellent magazine for school libraries, classrooms, and homes.

My elementary age kids are just beginning to understand the larger scope of the world and human knowledge. While in the process of looking for good magazines about current events I came across Ask, Muse and Dig. I signed up for a subscription to Ask in hopes that it would help my kids get that better understanding of the world of ideas. We've been quite pleased with it.

In that process of looking for good kids magazines we tried out a bunch of them, and got subscriptions to most. Here's my quick quick rundown

Kids Discover: heavy on pictures, light on words. The articles tend to be little snippets and factoids without context or much explanation.

National Geographic Kids: heavy on pictures, light on the words. Articles are a bit more in depth than Kids Discover.

Time for Kids: Thin and a bit flimsy, but comes frequently (every two weeks?) and covers major current events pretty well. Different versions are available for different ages. Order it from the Time for Kids web site since Amazon doesn't seem to carry it.

Dig: In depth interesting articles addressing history and society under the guise of archeology. Probably best for late elementary and middle school, and/or more thoughtful kids.

Ask and Muse: In depth interesting articles addressing all sorts of thoughtful topics. Probably best for late elementary and middle school, and/or more thoughtful kids.

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Ask Magazine is another wonderful publication from the originators of Cricket. Ask is all about arts and sciences, with each issue having one unifying theme. The recommended age range is from seven to ten, but younger fluent readers can also enjoy Ask.

Ask contains regular features as well as a variety of articles related to the central theme. "Scoops" is a two page spread of science news and discoveries. One story might be on a robotic arm, another on the acquisition of language in sac-winged bats. "Nestor's Dock" is a double page cartoon with enjoyable recurring characters. Each issue also has a contest which ties in with the theme. The water issue asks readers to design a fountain, the learning issue requests that readers design a school, and an art issue invites readers to copy their favorite work of art. Winners have their entries printed in a future issue. "Jimmy and the Bug" is another regular feature. Here, readers questions are answered in cartoon format. Questions might appear simple, "Why do lions have manes?" or more complex, " what are the rings around planets made of?" Answers are both thoughtful and informative. Every issue ends with the silly but sweet cartoon, "Marvin and Friends", on the back cover.

The "Making Art" issue of Ask includes a lovely piece on quilting traditions in rural Alabama. Many beautiful photos of quilts are displayed alongside comments from their creators. In the same edition, "Playing with Mud" showcases delicate Korean celadon pottery.

"The Liquid of Life" issue of Ask has a fascinating story on water. It covers the water cycle, water forms, a water molecule diagram, and gorgeous photographs of a water droplet, snowflake, and children and animals in various poses with rain and snow. Information offered can be quite complex, but it is just the thing for feeding hungry young intellects. This issue also has water trivia cards, with intriguing questions such as, what can go longer without water, a camel, or a giraffe? An article on water powered generators is very well done, and the issue is rounded out with a nice tour of bogs, fens, swamps, and marshes.

I'm very pleased to recommend Ask. It's funny but not obnoxious, informative but not controversial, with articles a bit shorter and lighter than those found in big brother's Muse Magazine.

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A magazine my children love as much as I do!!! We homeschool and love to plan lessons around all the fun articles and recommended activities. My children look forward to each and every copy. And guess what??? NO ADS!!!

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I bought Ask for my 8 year old son. I think I am as excited as he is when a new one arrives. It is very educational and brings out a little explorer in all of us. You will be so glad you bought Ask. They don't teach this stuff in school. My son wants to be a scientist when he grows up, now.

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Mobile Beat : the DJ Magazine

I subscribed to this mag years ago and the standard is dropping sadly with opinionated cookie cutter "DJ Advice"

Best bet? Join an online forum and ask questions

An absolute pleasure to read. Find out the latest in the mobile DJ industry: new products, event performance techniques and hot songs. What's more, now each issue includes the official American Disc Jockey Association (ADJA) newsletter. Here you'll learn about building and growing your business and what other successful mobile DJs are doing. If you don't get Mobile Beat now, you're missing out. Find out more about this great bi-monthly magazine and the dj shows they sponsor twice a year!

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Apollo: The Magazine of International Art and Antiques

since I am a painter and live in a disabled condition it is usually impossible to get a journal as great, both with a history and as a current as one of the finest journals published in art, current and historical.

this is all I have to sayI could get into my life as a house=bound person, unable to see what goes on in the world around me, but the best I can do is paint what I think the world around me is and looks like. And that world is filled with water and shockingly lonely boats. and someday the boats will dissapear and the only thing left will be that mist, lonely mist which cancles all around us but at the same time produces images unseen by the susnlit world around us all.

this is what I think and feel about your shockingly kind offer. But with the luck I have had I do not expect much. Onced ones helath is gone, so much else is, and once one can no longer leave their house, well, the only left is your mind, and mine is big, complex, byzantine, and statingly to most. But it is the product of someone who lives with themselves only, and fell in love with their brain,

TIME

I have been a subscriber to TIME for over 15 years and before that a reader of my parents' subscription. It pains me to say that this magazine has forgotten what it is about. Frankly, the only issues worth their salt are those resulting from a major world event such as a natural disaster or a terror attack; such events seem to energize an otherwise listless staff of seemingly bored editors and newswriters.

A newsweekly has the obligation to go beyond the newspapers--to use the extra couple days to provide a more balanced and analytical view. Unfortunately TIME fixes its editorial position at the beginning of a story--any future coverage is designed to prove TIME's initial position correct. The immediate taking of an editorial position is then carried into all future coverage of the event; stifling analysis and preventing any analytical development beyond the first few stories--"we told you so, we told you so." Even worse, the coverage of a lengthy story peters out until something sensational happens at which point the sensational event becomes the ultimate interpretation of the entire story. Can't the magazine occasionally admit it was wrong rather than turning its eye away from the story that continues to burn? Out of sight, out of mind is the mantra...

In fact, I sometimes debate whether the decline of this magazine mirrors or outpaces the general decline in our media; newspapers are failing, television news can't seem to get away from the gory or sensationalistic, even academic journals have specialized themselves into irrelevance. We seem to have a greater appreciation for comedy than analysis.

Neutrality is dead. Frankly, I don't care so much about any perceived editorial slant as I do about the fact that the magazine is increasingly boring and irrelevant. TIME used to have excellent coverage of trends and events outside of the United States--no more. Iran is building nuclear weapons but merits the occasional blurb on a world summary page. African states are making vast strides towards democracy, we get an article about Nigerian computer fraud. Russia is emerging from the turmoil of perestroika and its painful transition has much to teach about the costs and value of democracy, but we seem to focus only on the latest roadbomb in Iraq. Japan, one of the world's most influential cultures, this week merited only a snippet regarding a royal marriage and an analysis of foreign intrusion into sumo wrestling. Somewhere in the wide world is a fascinating place or culture to which TIME could send a correspondent and bring the place and people alive to its readership, instead we get tabloid excrement in the nature of Joel Stein's puerile take on pornography and social deviants. But most damning is the fact that after reading TIME one asks: How in the hell did our world become boring?

Can TIME try emulating The Economist rather than The Enquirer? Someone needs to step in and restore the proud tradition of complete and in-depth coverage--educate the reader about the world in which we live; don't wait until either natural disasters or internal politics shine the spotlight on any of the various cultures and countries in which real and interesting events take place every single week. TIME has the history and potential of being a five-star magazine, if only it would just focus on finding and reporting the news.

I was unsure about renewing my subscription to TIME, a solid-if-unspectacular magazine that delivers in-depth coverage of major domestic stories while spending most of its foreign reporting on Iraq. I have high regard for the new regular sections on History and Law. I will reserve judgement on another new section titled "The Power of One," but Caroline Kennedy's recent work on a New York City principal left something to be desired.

If you're looking for deep coverage of world news, this is not the magazine for you--look into The Economist or Foreign Affairs. But as a weekly summary of U.S. news with sharp analysis of the '08 Presidential contenders TIME does just fine.

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I picked up a recent, random issue of Time from a pile. And counted:

96 pages.

67 full pages worth of advertisements. (61 full pages, plus 12 half-page ads).

-------------------------

= 29 pages of "content"

And many articles are like advertisements, covering celebrity,entertainment product, diets, gadgets, and vitamins. Plus 4 pages in the sampled issue cover the "social trend" of having your closets customized. So you're left with very little lost in the clutter: Letters to the Editor (that pale next to internet blog posts/responses), short-attention span current event snippets; and Time's news stories with lots of big pictures! Whoopdideedoo!

In short, Time seems aimed at intellectually lazy uber-consumers (who are also apparently too lazy to organize they're own closets!) who like Catalogs, and who have very limited interest in what's going on.

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I remember my history teacher dragging in 25 copies of TIME magazine back in the 80's. The magazine was chock full of cutting edge journalism (truth with actual facts to support the story's) and edgy human interest stories. Now, it's a sell out to junk and punk blogging, where everyone thinks they're a serious writer.

The magazine has dumbed itself down, to the point I'd rather pick up The National Inquirer, as I might find more truthful writing in that rag these days. Like NEWSWEEK, TIME is circling the drain. As they move completely away from ethical journalism to total fluff and stuff, hyped up, made up entertainment, as well as a statist mentality following like mindless lemmings, romancing the current administration in the White House; it's a thrill up their leg a minute, and no one seems to remember they need a degree in Journalism, not Blogging for Dummies.

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I will be cancelling my subscription to Time Magazine. In an effort to increase their appeal, they have done the opposite. The magazine has gotten as silly and irrelevant as TV news. It is simply too dumb to merit reading.

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Military Spouse

Military Spouse holds itself out as a sort of "Self" magazine tailored to the military spouse (well, wife, for the most part). The articles themselves are innocuous, uncontroversial and upbeat, as you'd probably expect. One disturbing thing in the most recent issue caught my eye: in a Christmas-gift section, the authors write, "Is his Christmas list bigger than your wallet this year? Stop saying Bah Humbug, and try a payment plan! Freedom Furniture and Electronics can set up military families with per-payday allotments ...." In civilian speak, you authorize the finance office to direct a portion of your pay to the company each month on a layaway type of arrangement.

Here's the problem. This company and others like it prey on young military members by advertising ultra-low "per payday" prices for the items they sell. They hold themselves out as offering special deals to military members (they like to use words like "Freedom" and "Patriot" in their company names). You have to hunt around the website to figure out how to calculate the actual price of what you're buying, because they never post the total price of anything. Everything is based on the purchaser getting a line of credit with the company, and that credit line is at a whopping 19.96% APR. If you search enough, you'll find out that you need to multiply the "per payday" price by 48 to determine the total price. They advertise a grill that costs $980, but you can buy the same thing from Amazon for $330 ... they have tripled the price. They advertise an Acer laptop which comes to an absurd $1,673, when that same laptop is being sold for less than 25% of that price on overstock websites. But, at $10 or $20 a payday, it sounds like a great deal, until you figure out the final cost would be $480 or $960, respectively.

The military spends a great deal of time trying to educate its young servicemembers that they're getting fleeced by companies like Freedom Furniture, and it's mindboggling that a magazine that holds itself out as supporting military families is endorsing getting involved with such shady marketers. What this tells me is that the publishers of Military Spouse are more concerned with product placement and ad revenue than they are with military families. No one should be encouraging our members to pay 3 to 4 (or more) times the going rate for merchandise. And they definitely shouldn't be pitching this as a gift-buying solution for people who are already short of cash! I say avoid this publication.

I was so excited that this magazine was coming out and I subscribed without bothering to see the first isssue. I'm sure some people will find it beneficial, but I want more. I'd save my subscription money and perhaps buy it off the rack if it is relevant on occasion.

I will not be renewing because I'm very disappointed in the content and quality of this magazine. It has so much potential, but falls drastically short. The content rarely, if at all, has enough information to be valuable in any category. The articles are short and not in depth enough to make an impact. The advice columns border on irresponsible and tacky. In some cases, I can't believe that the advisor is a qualified expert as they state. I still think Military Spouse could raise itself up and be an excellent magazine, but I will not buy it until I see that it has done so.

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I've bought several issues after reading the cover, and every time I've been disappointed by the content within. Every time I picked up another copy, I had hoped that it would get better. Well, I have finally learned my lesson and will stop wasting my money.

The problem I have with this magazine is that while the articles are relevant to the military spouse, the articles themselves are way too short, unoriginal, and just filled with fluff. I get the feeling that the writers do little to no research when composing their articles, and just write off the top of their heads. While I can appreciate reading about others' personal experiences, if the article is supposed to be about stress and the military spouse, I want to actually know what kind of resources are available and expect some professional information in the article. Instead, the articles offer generic advice that you can find anywhere else, and aren't necessarily tailored to the unique needs of a military spouse, e.g. Breathe in and out slowly when under stress. Really? My husband is deployed to a war zone and that's the advice you give me?

The truth is, this magazine could be really great, however it definitely falls short. I feel that it lacks professionalism, and appears to be produced by a bunch of military spouses looking for a hobby. While I am all for supporting other military spouses and their endeavors, some of the magazine's staff just aren't cut out to be professional journalists. The content and look of the magazine would be greatly improved if they brought in a few writers and an editor with real journalist backgrounds and experience, and that are not married to the military. I don't think having writers not married to the military would hurt, but actually help because they would actually have to do research to learn about this community, and not just write about their generic experiences. They could also expand the magazine to include content that all people would enjoy, not just military spouses. I think this would bring the magazine up to a higher standard and would warrant my $3.99 at the newsstand.

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The magazine itself is nothing special. It is very repetitive with not a lot of useless information. It's mostly just filled with pictures and articles with no substance.

The magazine has an online forum which I went onto and posted a few things. The other spouses in this forum were rude, closed minded, misguided and paranoid. They had Islamic bashing sessions (along with bashing others who weren't Christian by saying that non-Christians have mental disorders), they mistrusted ANY prior service women (which I happen to be) or active duty women because they think that ALL women in the military are out to "steal their men." They condone infidelity by saying that anyone that has been cheated on should just go to marriage counseling because it was an accident (even if it was a regular occurrence in the marriage) and you should NEVER leave for that reason because you should ALWAYS make your marriage work after infidelity, including multiple offenses (but in reality it seems that they were saying that you loose benefits and might have to get your own job if you get a divorce). If this is what the magazine represents, I would NEVER recommend it to any military spouse!!

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I disagree with the negative reviews, and I realize that as a business owner its hard to make everyone happy. I think its important to try and get the nuggets you need out of the magazine and if something is "missing" in your eyes, think of how you may be able to make a contribution to the military sposue community yourself. Its a group effort to meet each other's needs. As a career and life coach in the military spouse community, I often recommend that spouses read Military Spouse magazine to get a sense of the broader military community beyond their current circumstances and was suprised to read any negative reviews on the publication. I think they do a great job!

Plaza Magazine - Swedish Edition

The most stylish, elegant magazine I ever have seen. From modern interior to cool fashion. I saw it first in Sweden and then in New York. If you like to see the latest, check it out. I loved the magazine so much I sent a letter to the publisher Mr. Christopher Östlund and gave him my credit. But as uisusal, check it out your self...

Dish

I've bought several issues of Dish when on vacation in New Zealand, where it costs the equivalent of $6 US. It is beautifully produced, with excellent graphics and enticing pictures. The recipes are about right for my taste, fairly ambitious but not impossibly hard. Others might feel differently about that, of course. The recipes have metric quantities and oven temperatures are in Celsius, but there is a useful conversion page near the end of each issue. This may seem intimidating at first, but in fact you get used to it pretty quickly. Many or most of the recipes have full-page photos.

Many of the articles are local to New Zealand, naturally, for instance one about truffle growing there, so probably the magazine would not be as charming to someone who does not know that country. Still, it is a very good food magazine. It is just a pity that the very high postage costs from down under make it so expensive in the US.

Addendum as of 11/20/10: This magazine is available in electronic form on Zinio.com for the much more reasonable price of $19.17 for six issues. I don't think the web version offers nearly the tactile pleasure that the paper one does, but it is one heck of a lot cheaper. You can read parts of a sample issue at the site if you want to check it out.

I had to check this ad twice. Who would pay $100.00 for six issues of a magazine? I subscribe to over 30 magazines a month and I would not consider this magazine.

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Art & Antiques

ART & ANTIQUES for collectors of the fine and decorative arts shows considerable growth as a journal. The quality of production values has increased and so has the content. For example, the current issue covers well-written articles ranging from 'The Rise of Sculpture' ('Into the Third Dimension' by Sallie Brady), to 'Chinese Classics', to 'New England Museums' to 'Avant-Garde Toys'. And if that spectrum doesn't appeal to the reader, then open the journal and find excellent in depth beautifully illustrated essays on Leonora Carrington called 'Nobody's Muse' by Edward M. Gómez and a rich article by Editor John Dorfman 'Golden Opportunities' in which he follows trends and sales of Chinese antiquities.

There are articles on current events such as the many art fairs around the world, reviews of art books, and notes on concepts being discussed at this time in the art world. The ads are well constructed and vary from decorative arts resources to contemporary galleries to auction houses. The color reproduction throughout is excellent and the quality of paper is far better than the magazine's competitors. This is a magazine worth investigating as a subscription. Grady Harp, September 11

This great magazine blends articles about antiques and fine art and craft in a way that is accessable to collector and novice alike.The layout is clean and well designed with insightfull but not stuffy text.

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I look forward to receiving this magazine. The grade of the paper and the quality of the photos and print is of collectible quality. The articles are very educated and informative. I also enjoy the ads and the auction listings, etc.

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Cruisin Style Magazine

This is a great magazine. You can find all the car shows and cruise nights in your area. Its great to see regular peoples cars and the stories behind them. Its also great to see the smaller car shows. Highly recommend to anyone who loves classic cars!!!

This is the best car magazine ever! Especially for the classic/muscle/custom car enthusiast, Cruisin' Style Magazine offers a little something for everyone. There are informative "How To" tips, interesting new products, great buys in the classifieds, but most importantly its the ultimate Car Show directory. With listings for events like car shows, cruise nights, races, swap meets and more from across the USA, Cruisin' Style is the auto enthusiast's most valuable reading material.

Don't you want to see your car in publication? The best way is to go to a local show and write a review, take some pictures and mail them in. Cruisin' Style Magazine subscribers are welcome to send in material anytime, since they still operate like a grassroots magazine. They are one of the few magazines who will take submissions from subscribers. They even welcome articles about the owner's vehicle. Make sure to provide great digital photos and an interesting story. Who knows? Your car may be on the cover next!

If you're planning to sell (or buy) a car or part, Cruisin' Style Magazine is a must have. They even offer internet exposure for your ad. Not to forget, this magazine makes a WONDERFUL gift that keeps on giving through out the year, and for magazines, Cruisin' Style is more than reasonably priced. Its a great deal.

So don't hesitate, get a subscription today. You'll be happy you did. Cruisin' Style Magazine, just the gift for the person who has everything.

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Urbanology

Its about time that an independent magazine shows us that there are other artists out there and other artists we should look for. If you havent picked up the magazine, get it. It's based out of toronto but has worldwide appeal because its not a toronto or canadian content based magazine. They of course shine light on their own but it has appeal to all thats why they have US and Europe distribution now.. congrats and I look forward to more issues for more!!