ABSTRACT
A major feature of children’s magazines, like all magazines, is their periodical character. Due to this ephemeral nature, magazines-more so than books-are often considered a mirror of their time, reflecting all sorts of contemporary social and cultural issues. However, this is only half the story. Magazines also play an active role in shaping that reality (Johannes 1995, 152). This makes them an interesting source for studying views and representations of the world, and in the case of children’s periodicals, also of images of children. Moreover, children’s magazines are an interesting object of study from a media-theoretical perspective because in essence they are multimedial, their contents ranging from stories, pictures, photographs and comics to all kinds of non-fiction texts and letters from readers.
