Encouraging creativity in children is the goal of SPARK a magazine for 4- to 12-year-olds that premieres this month.
Edited by the publisher of Writer’s Digest and the Artist’s Magazine, the monthly will offer “kid tested” projects for drawing, writing, painting, sculpting, storytelling, and other creative activities, which children may work on alone or with parents.
Each issue will include a “Kids’ Q&A” section, a showcase for original projects, suggestions on new children’s arts products and homemade arts materials, and a message to parents offering ways to nurture self-confidence and creativity.
Available at newsstands, SPARSe! has a subscription rate of $19.95; write F&W Publications Inc., 1507 Dana Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45207.
The 25th anniversarg of Reading is Fundamental is being celebrated with an anthology of original children’s stories by awardwinning authors and illustrators.
To Ride a Butterfly, available in bookstores in October, includes poetry, songs, short stories, and pictures by 52 authors and illustrators. Among the contributors are the Caldecott Medal winner Peter Spier and the Newbery Medal winner Madeleine L’Engle. A special foreword by First Lady Barbara Bush, a long-time champion of literacy programs, is included.
All profits fi@om the sale of To Ride a Butterfly will be donated to R@F from the book’s publisher, a joint imprint of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.
R@F is a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington that has sponsored reading-motivation programs for children since 1966.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, a leading publisher of textbooks, scientific materials, and generalinterest books, last month acceded to a takeover bid worth more than $1.5 billion made by General Cinema Corporation, the nation’s fourthlargest theater operator.
The publishing house, also known for its fictional and literary lists, including such authors as Umberto Eco and Octavio Paz, had rejected General Cinema’s previous bid in January of $1.4 billion. H.B.J. currently holds $1.8 billion in junk-bond debt it acquired while fighting off a hostile takeover by the British publisher Robert Maxwell.
Under the proposed merger, which must be approved by shareholders and bendholders, Harcourt would become a subsidiary of General Cinema. Peter Jovanovich would continue as president and chief executive of the publishing firm. --S.K.G.
