Ask for Another Good Children's Science Magazine and Ye Shall Receive

Ask Magazine is designed to teach elementary age children about science using art and arts and crafts. Each issue has a theme and that theme is adhered to fairly strongly throughout (everything but a single page of short "how things work" articles at the front and a page of scientific question and answer at the back fits the theme). Themes tend to be less general than the themes in other children's science magazines and often take a slightly different angle than you might expect. Instead of an issue on the science of light, Ask published an issue on darkness. Other issues take a "how x works" approach; one of my favorite issues covers how our brain processes new information, or in simpler terms, how we learn.

Regardless of its theme, each issue makes an attempt to both educate and entertain, to find whimsical and offbeat ways of teaching about the subject at hand. It often looks at the physical and aesthetic elements of a subject (the "art angle") and includes hands-on activities that veer more to arts and crafts rather than traditional science projects. Most of these activities are quick and not terribly messy or time consuming; probably the messiest and longest project in each issue is a paper cutout project called Take Out. This project, often in the form of paper dolls with tabbed outfits, often seems to slide into "providing an activity to provide an activity" territory rather than "slyly helping kids learn by giving them something fun to do" which should be the goal. I also suspect some portion of the magazine's readership will be wholly uninterested in this activity; I can't imagine too many 10 year old boys being that interested in playing with dolls (but I could be wrong).

Projects are generally presented as part of a larger article. Each issue has six articles on the subject, three short and three long. The paper cutout looks and feels like an article, but it's considered a regular feature and not part of the article count. At least one if not two other activities are found within the six articles. Larger articles are 5-6 pages long and often incorporate sidebars, callouts, smaller interactive activities such as quizzes, and other non-traditional content. Smaller articles are 1-2 pages long and tend to be more straightforward. Both have a lot of illustrations of different sorts. Style and tone of both picture and text varies greatly, sometimes leading to a bit of a cacophonous feel to an issue.

Each issue also has a cartoon that fits the theme. Although technically containing the same characters and part of an ongoing strip, I find strips tend to be independent and not linked in any real way to previous or subsequent installments. The artwork is somewhat dull and not terribly appealing, but some of the ideas and content are quite clever and make me laugh. For example, the cartoon in the issue on cars featured "grassoline" and showed a car that runs on grass. Despite the very real lack in the artwork, this cartoon was very effective. Not only was it funny, but it illustrated some engineering principles without getting technical and it also implied that alternate fuel methods were under development without getting into politics or heavy issues. Some of the cartoons are much lighter, though. The cartoon in the darkness issue showed some of the creatures you might imagine lurking about if you're afraid of the dark and the power went out. It didn't bring anything to the table other than a stab at entertainment (and, in my opinion, it failed there too).

There's usually at least one article on the history of the theme or some related topic; sometimes it's just a short timeline while other times it's a more extensive and expansive article. Either way, this tends to be a very interesting piece. For example, the Cars issue included a timeline highlighting several inventions essential to the invention of the first motorized automobile; these were well chosen and really gave readers a sense of how interrelated discoveries are and how new inventions really build upon what's already out there.

Ask Magazine is supposedly aimed at 7-10 year olds. The print of the magazine seems a bit large for that age group; it's certainly larger than other magazines I read aimed at children that age. At the same time, the vocabulary used is more extensive and more advanced. Some of the really tough words are defined at first use, but even so the language seems terribly advanced for the age and the definitions are specific to their usage in the magazine rather than general definitions so words learned this way may not be learned in a broad sense. There are no pronunciation guides for words like "proboscis" and, while they are the technically correct terms as used, there's often a much more accessible way to say the same thing. In addition to making it more difficult for the intended audience to access the material, some of the word choices here feel pretentious.

Despite these flaws, I really like Ask Magazine. It takes themes and comes at them in unusual and creative ways. The articles included are all tied to the theme, but are often skewed to the odd or slightly offbeat without losing sight of the fact that we're here to learn about the topic at hand (the How We Learn issue did this particularly well, with articles on why repetition and practice is effective, the intelligence of birds (a play on "bird brain"), and artificial intelligence). At times, I even learn things I don't already know; considering my science background and interest in these subjects that's pretty impressive for a kid's magazine. It could perhaps play up the arts and craft angle a bit more; I like the idea of these sorts of alternate hands on activities as a teaching tool but I feel like they're sometimes an afterthought. I hesitate to suggest replacing more of the articles with more activities because these articles really are very well done, but at the same time it feels like a magazine supposedly taking an arts and crafts focus to science should have more arts and crafts activities in each issue. Regardless, Ask Magazine has a lot to offer children (and adults) interested in science and how things work.