Highlights doesn’t kid around when it comes to science and tech

AUSTIN, Texas—If you ever attended a pediatric dentist or loved reading between the ages of two and 12, chances are good you've come across Highlights. The legacy kids' magazine turned 70 in the summer of 2016, and throughout the decades it has been a cultural constant. Everyone knows about hidden picture searches or the long-running Goofus and Gallant comic, but poetry from Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes has also graced its pages (and unpublished submissions from the likes of Walter Cronkite sit in the archives). The Highlights brand has become such a part of the American fabric that it has been referenced in pop culture across decades, in everywhere from Beavis and Butthead to The Colbert Report, Mad Men, The Simpsons, Blackish, and Arrested Development.

If you haven't recently flipped through the magazine, Highlights will likely surprise you after all these years. A new documentary called 44 Pages (which is the magazine's constant size, since there's no advertising) chronicles Highlights' history, process, and philosophy in the run-up to its 70th anniversary edition in June 2016. At South by Southwest, the film showed that Highlights is a more complex publication than your younger-self ever recognized. Now, as it has done throughout its history, Highlights quietly packs real, grown-up science and tech into each issue as seamlessly as it hides a hammer within the bark of some illustrated tree.

“The evidence is straightforward”

In an era of declining print revenue and subscriptions, Highlights maintains a pretty wide footprint. The magazine reaches two million households monthly (and receives about 300 unsolicited freelance submissions each month), all while focusing on children ages six to 12. So with that potential influence, it's refreshing to see staff like Science Editor Andy Boyles on board.

“We want kids to know science is an ongoing, self-correcting process and not a collection of facts,” he says immediately after being introduced. "When I first got a question about 'when are we going to die from global warming,' it made me question if we’re doing things right—what age is the right age to learn about things like that?"

Highlights doesn't publish stories with DOIs at the bottom, obviously. When your primary audience is children, certain topics need to be explained in the simplest of terms. And while the editorial staff generally tries to never frighten readers (so stories involving guns no longer appear, and even hurricanes and earthquakes could cross the horror line), Boyles helps the team find kid-friendly solutions to real-world concerns. After getting letters about climate change, for instance, Highlights did a nonfiction piece about polar bears that introduced information on climate change while offering hope about the bears' perseverance.

Highlights is produced in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, a small town near the Scranton area within the northeast corner of the state. It's a middle-class, somewhat homogenous rural area that can at times stand in for large portions of the country (nearby Luzerne County can as well, based on all the media seeking out voters in Wilkes-Barre as microcosms of the 2016 election). But Highlights' scope encompasses a lot more than its immediate home: religions of the world are represented, LGBT couples finally appeared in illustrations this year, company print products now come in 16 languages. The team strives to present the larger world as it is ("It’s crucial for us to include this diversity in the magazine," says Judy Burke, lead editor. "That’s what makes the world interesting”). That means not shying away from real science even if some readers—or, perhaps more accurately, their parents—choose not to believe it.

"A lot of families don’t agree with evolution and don’t want their kids exposed to it, but we do agree with evolution," Boyles says. "We never want to poke anyone in the eye with it—that’s not our way. But it’d be irresponsible to bring up dinosaurs without bringing up how long ago they lived or how we know what we know, because the evidence is straightforward."

Today, Highlights aims to have some science content in each and every issue. To that end, the magazine launched a robotics column every other month starting last summer.

(Digital) fun with a purpose

44 Pages does a great job of showing how Highlights uses traditional and modern aspects of media toward its unique editorial goals. Director Tony Shaff gives us cinematic visuals of sticky-note boards and local focus group work being done at nearby elementary schools. We hear current editors debating if a nonfiction feature about a mathematician will complement a center spread on pizza making, or discussing how to address screen time for kids effectively ("I've been reading about so much time kids spend on their devices—can you come up with a Goofus and Gallant that speaks to that?” asks Editor-in-Chief Christine French Cully).

Highlights still engages in some decidedly old-school practices. Copyeditors don't just read text in their favorite word processors, they test out recipes or perform craft instructions themselves as a means of fact-checking. And despite receiving 3,000-plus letters per year, each one is still read and responded to by staff in a genuine manner, no matter the topic. Is smoking good or bad? My friend says brown is the stupidest color in the book—what book are they talking about? My mom says being a spy is a job only found in the movies—is that true?

Through this feedback avenue, the magazine has even been able to help kids navigate genuine distress and uncertainty, as seen in letters dealing with abuse from adults, fears about school after Sandy Hook, or uncertainty about self-identity and gender.

At the same time, the magazine does its best to continually evolve alongside technology and our ever-improving understanding of childhood. 44 Pages includes discussions about developmental compression, the idea that kids are simply growing up faster. But while today's youth may be more advanced physically and cognitively, magazine staff find the social/emotional pace of growth hasn't increased in the same way (informing decisions like how the publication handles the potentially scary info noted above).

And toward the end of the film, we meet some Highlights collaborators at Fingerprint, an app-design company based in San Francisco. While Highlights still considers print the core of its business, the editors recognized the need for a mobile experience as kids increasingly interact with our devices. "Most kids have a phone by 10, 70 percent have a tablet by 8, and by 12 they have their own social media accounts and seemingly unlimited access to mobile,” Fingerprint notes within the film.

It took a year of planning, but Highlights and Fingerprint debuted the brand's first digital magazine subscription just last summer. The early results documented in 44 Pages sound promising—puzzles and quizzes may be the two sections users spend the most time with, but reading accounts for 12 percent of all content consumed within the app. That fits into a mantra repeated throughout the film: Highlights fancies itself "fun with a purpose." So whether it's through dinosaurs, robots, comics, or apps, plenty of thought goes into making the next generation think every month.

“We’re trying to create kids who are creative, who care about other people, who are thinking and reasoning human beings," says Linda Rose, associate editor. "How can we not benefit from all of that?”

44 Pages is currently on the film festival circuit, with upcoming dates in Dallas, Cleveland, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Future screenings can be found on the film's official website.  

Disclaimer: The author grew up near Honesdale in Archbald, Pennsylvania. He had a subscription as a kid and once considered a fellowship at the magazine.  

Listing image by Tony Shaff, 44 Pages