About Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty is a bimonthly American magazine for young children, launched in October 1952 by George J. Hecht and Parents magazine. Taking its title from the nursery rhyme, it features short stories, poems, nonfiction articles, games, comics, recipes and crafts for beginning readers. It is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is published by U.S. Kids Magazines, and carries the ISSN 0273-7590.

Having been published continuously for more than sixty-five years, Humpty Dumpty is one of the oldest American magazines for children. Unlike most of the titles founded alongside it, it has never ceased publication: it survived the sale of its founding publishing house, the decline of print children's magazines, and the merger that ended its sister publication Children's Digest in 2009.

Launch by George J. Hecht

The magazine — originally titled Humpty Dumpty's Magazine — was launched in October 1952 by George J. Hecht, the founder of Parents magazine, as part of the Parents Magazine Press line of children's periodicals. It was created as a sister publication to Children's Digest, which Hecht's company had founded two years earlier, and it was aimed at a younger audience than the Digest's readers: children just learning to read.

Sources differ slightly on the target age. The magazine is generally described as serving children from two to six years old, while its publisher and booksellers have described it as ideal for children of five to seven who are learning to read independently, and its parent organisation has stated its mission in terms of children aged five to seven. The common thread across all descriptions is the emergent reader: a child moving from being read to, to reading alone.

Early editors and Martin Gardner

The first editor of Humpty Dumpty was Harold Schwartz, who was in charge of the Parents Institute's new line of juvenile periodicals. Another early editor was Alvin Tresselt, the children's book author known for his picture books. Schwartz's most remarkable hire was Martin Gardner, the mathematics and science writer, whom he took on as a contributing editor at the magazine's launch.

Gardner's own account of those years, reprinted in his book The No-Sided Professor, describes the scale of his contribution: for eight years he supplied about a quarter of each issue. He devised the activity features — the cut-outs, games and puzzles designed to be used rather than preserved, on the grounds that the Parents Institute had no interest in library subscriptions — and for each issue he also wrote a short story and a poem of advice spoken by Mr. Dumpty, the magazine's editor-in-chief character, to his son Junior. The Junior stories were written to be read aloud, and Gardner later gathered the poems into a book published by Simon and Schuster. His Humpty Dumpty work, including stories such as the January 1959 tale he reprinted decades later, is now studied by Gardner collectors as a substantial, half-forgotten body of writing for children.

Contents and mission

An issue of Humpty Dumpty mixes short stories, poems, nonfiction articles, games, comics, recipes and crafts, all designed for an emergent reader. Stories, poems, cartoons, puzzles, games, recipes and crafts are built to reinforce healthy lifestyle messages and core values alongside early literacy.

That combination reflects its current publisher's mission. Humpty Dumpty is published by the Children's Better Health Institute, a division of the Saturday Evening Post Society Inc., a nonprofit charitable organisation. Within that structure, the magazine's stated mission is to promote the healthy physical, educational, creative, social and emotional growth of children in a format that is engaging, stimulating and entertaining. It is one of the U.S. Kids family of children's magazines published by the Institute from Indianapolis.

The Saturday Evening Post Society era

In January 1980, both Humpty Dumpty and Children's Digest came under the ownership of the nonprofit Saturday Evening Post Society, ending the magazine's Parents Magazine Press era. The move placed it alongside Jack and Jill, the society's magazine for older children, in what became the U.S. Kids family: Humpty Dumpty for the youngest readers, Jack and Jill for children of roughly seven to twelve, and for a time Turtle Magazine for preschoolers as a companion title.

The graded ladder mattered to the magazine's survival. When Children's Digest was merged into Jack and Jill in 2009, Humpty Dumpty — serving an age group no other title in the family covered — was continued, and it remains in publication as a bimonthly, with six issues a year.

Notable contributors

Beyond Gardner, the magazine's contributor list includes Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon, whose work for the magazine belongs to the final period of her career; Mel Alexenberg, the artist and art educator; Charles Ghigna, the poet and children's author; Lee Bennett Hopkins, the educator, poet and anthologist; Jack Kent, the cartoonist and author-illustrator; Lilian Moore, the poet and children's author who also worked as an editor; Ilse-Margret Vogel, the German-American children's author; and Jay Williams, the science fiction and children's author.

That roster reflects the magazine's position in mid-century children's publishing, when a well-run children's magazine could attract writers who were simultaneously shaping the era's picture books and poetry anthologies.

The cover contest

The magazine's signature reader feature is its annual themed cover contest, run with its U.S. Kids sister publications. Readers submit their own artwork on a set theme; the winning entry is featured on the front cover of the magazine, with the second- and third-place winners and a Readers' Choice winner showcased inside the same issue. Selected entries are also printed in each issue as Humpty's Art Gallery.

The contest carries prizes for the winners' schools as well as the children: under the U.S. Kids programme, winning schools' art programmes have received awards, with more than $25,000 given to school art programmes over the contest's history. For a magazine aimed at children too young for most competitions, the chance to appear on a national magazine cover is a powerful bond between reader and publication.

Critical reception

Humpty Dumpty has not been without critics. A 1986 study of several magazines for the very young, including Humpty Dumpty, concluded that only National Geographic World solely and completely provided young children with entertainment and interesting information offering many opportunities for extended discussion, and a 1980 study was similarly dismissive of Humpty Dumpty and other children's magazines of its type.

Set against that academic criticism is the magazine's record with the awards that parents and educators actually use. Whatever scholars of children's literature have made of its formula, the magazine's combination of simple stories, activities and health messages has repeatedly satisfied the juries of the major family-media awards.

Awards

The magazine's honours include the iParenting Media Awards Best Product Winner in 2009, the Parents' Choice Approved Award in 2011 and again in 2012, the Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award in 2011 for its feature Autumn Moon, and the Parents' Choice Award Recommended Winner in 2017. Booksellers describe the 2012 Parents' Choice Approved winning magazine as designed with an emergent reader in mind, reinforcing healthy lifestyle messages and promoting core values.

The magazine today

Humpty Dumpty continues as a bimonthly print magazine, edited in its recent era by the children's author Terry Webb Harshman under the direction of Steven Slon, within the U.S. Kids Magazines operation in Indianapolis. It is also sold in digital editions through magazine retailers, with new issues continuing to appear on a six-issues-a-year schedule.

Its survival makes it a living link to the golden age of American children's magazines. Founded in 1952 as the younger sibling of Children's Digest, it has outlived that sibling, its founding publisher and most of its competitors — still doing, for today's beginning readers, exactly what Harold Schwartz and Martin Gardner designed it to do in 1952.