New Magazine Round-Up

One of the hottest new magazines in the 9- to 14-year-old age group is Renaissance Tween. Fifteenth-Century Italy is huge among youngsters these days, and RT is at the forefront of the Renaissance renaissance, being one of the biggest-selling publications on the stands right now.

This month’s magazine has a great guide for making oil paints from scratch, with handy hints on locating the best pigments around the home. I found this fascinating, and had no idea that if your parents don’t have any ultramarine stored away, you can simply grind up Mum’s blue eye shadow with a pestle and mortar.

Also in this issue: There’s an informative article on becoming apprentice to a great master, Miley Cyrus discusses Chiaroscuro, the Jonas Brothers share their tips on creating depth in landscape painting using grid-style perspective techniques and Who is Dreamier: Michelangelo’s David or the Mona Lisa?

Look out for the great free gift, a block of wax for making scale models of your favourite sculptures!

One of my own personal favourite magazines is Magazine Reviewer Magazine. This month’s issue is one of the best ever, with a free cut-out-and-keep guide to similes that one can use when reviewing magazines. It’s really useful, like a…a…a…like a…oh, my mind just went blank there, sorry.

February’s MRM has some great features, like an article outlining ways in which reviewers can read as much of a magazine as possible in the store without having to buy it. There’s an ethical debate on the morality of reviewing naughty top-shelf publications, with contributions from Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Tobermory Flange and Reverend John DeWitt. A free gift is also included in this month’s issue – a copy of next month's Magazine Reviewer Magazine, for reviewing purposes.

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised by new publication The New Yorker Reject Pile Magazine. This promising journal features all the articles and columns that were sent to the New Yorker but which were rejected. I was expecting the articles to be poorly researched, badly written and derivative, but there were a lot of gems.

John Eager’s wonderful Things I Have Found in my Ear is a great, 16-page article that made me laugh, cry and snot up a little. Also, the excellent opinion piece Why Don’t You Publish Any of My Articles, You Snobby Know-Nothing Magazine Editor by Ian Struggle is a vitriolic treatise on the plights of a freelance journalist.

Not everything in this magazine is as good as these examples, though. David McWriter’s Letters I Received from the Bank is far too unbelievable for my liking, and Judith Craptacular’s photographs of twine are nothing short of dullsville. But the rest of the mag is well worth a read, even the barcode, which consists of a very aesthetically-pleasing series of lines and numbers.

Magazines are available from shops.