![]() Editors sometimes visit nearby schools to field test certain features with the target audience. The Honesdale editorial offices, which local schoolchildren visit on field trips, seems to keep Highlights anchored in a wholesome environment. “That’s the funniest feedback I ever got,” he says. That cartoonist, Neil Numberman, tells the filmmakers that Highlights is especially sensitive about any objects appearing too close to a subject’s crotch in any drawing. We also see him dealing with freelance artists, including a self-described “hipster Brooklyn” cartoonist. It doesn’t go into criticism the magazine received from the conservative group One Million Moms.)Īrt Director Patrick Greenish Jr., who has evidently just recently come on at the time of the filming, talks about how he cleaned up the look of the magazine, with a more consistent use of fonts and colors. (In a postscript, the documentary notes that families led by same-sex parents were acknowledged in a 2017 issue of the magazine. The magazine also steers clear of politics, though one editor says that some young readers have written in to ask when the magazine’s pages might reflect their same-sex parents. That, too, is deemed unsuitable for Highlights. “Even frightening things, natural things like hurricanes and tornadoes, we don’t talk about those in Highlights,” she says.Īnother says that young readers are often submitting artwork for the readers’ pages of dinosaurs eating each other. Its pages each month are full of bright, colorful articles, puzzles, poems, young people’s letters and other features.Ĭully explains that Highlights is not the place to explain things such as terrorism or gun violence to children. Highlights offers a publication that is devoid of almost anything that could be considered controversial or edgy. “Can we think of a Goofus and Gallant that might reflect that growing trend?” she asks.Ĭully tells the filmmakers that children have been seeing faster physical growth in recent decades, but their social-emotional development still needs careful nurturing. We see Editor-in-Chief Christine French Cully meeting with the editorial staff, talking about young people’s growing interest in electronic devices and apps. “ 44 Pages ,” a 90-minute documentary directed by Tony Shaff, has been making the film festival circuit since last year and has its national digital release on Tuesday.Įditor Judy Burke started at the magazine as an intern, and she says “I know that my 9-year-old self would be excited that I work at Highlights.” (The younger Myers and two other magazine staff members tragically died in a plane crash in 1960 while on company business.) Then the Myers’ eldest son, also named Gary like his father, hit upon an idea that put Highlights back in the black: Sell subscriptions to doctors and dentists, where generations would be exposed to the magazine in the waiting room. But business troubles within about four years almost led to the shutdown of the magazine. ![]() Other features followed, and door-to-door sales quickly grew the circulation. For some reason, the characters sported elves’ ears at first. Within two years, the most famous characters arrived-Goofus and Gallant, the young boys who consistently do the wrong thing and the right thing, respectively. The earliest issues had one of the magazine’s signature features-the Hidden Pictures puzzle.
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