Britannica Magazine Review

Reviewed by Deborah Banasko

I’m a huge fan of anything that teaches my children without them realising it. My 10 and 7 year olds are both avid readers, but my 10 year old especially finds non-fiction books a little dull as they aren’t always displayed in an interesting format.

We were really keen to try out the new monthly non-fiction Britannica Magazine, and they kindly sent us two copies of both the introductory and April issues. They have been created from a collaboration between “What on Earth” Magazines and “Encyclopedia Britannica”, aimed at 7-11 year olds with a focus science, nature, geography, history, general knowledge and current affairs… basically they cover everything!

The front covers are bright and eye-catching for children. The layout in general varies between newspaper columns to displays of pictures with information boxes, and there are plenty of photographs and pictures to embed the information. I love this approach as it feels more grown up yet very easy and accessible for the age group.

I let the kids have a read after school one day and both of them were enthralled, and would come back and forth to read an interesting section of an article to me, or relay back to me something fascinating that they had learned. They have been so absorbed in these magazines and learned so much.

Each magazine has a key focus, for example Space, and children learn about past, present and future space plans. However many other topics are included such as a Timeline of Magnificent Machines, Amazing Animals of the World and plankton; if you think that plankton sounds boring then I guarantee your child will disagree after reading the headline “The Power of Plankton Farts”. My son found this very funny.

The detailed articles are broken up by pages on less serious facts, such as unusual rules from around the world, some of which were hilarious (apparently in the UK it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament!) and 22 things to know about 2022.

In the April edition, “Earth Invaders”, there are articles on weird creatures, the A-Z of Shakespeare’s new words and “How to Teach Your Grown Ups about Pluto”; naturally they did! Such a broad and varied subject matter is covered and the children felt really confident telling me what they had learned. I personally loved the timeline of sporting firsts, and based on the two magazines sent I believe a timeline will feature for a different topic in each edition.

The magazine is written so cleverly and always with children in mind, and there is such a variety of information that there is bound to be something of interest. As an adult I enjoyed reading them too!

My 7 year old is a strong reader for his age and coped well with the vocab and information, however a less strong reader may need a parent to help a little. He loved the Big Britannica quiz and jokes. The pictures and photographs are beautiful and the vocab chosen is age appropriate and certainly not “dumbed down”, so perhaps having a dictionary to hand may be useful for the younger end of the target age from time to time.

My son is desperate to send a photo in or ask the experts a question as the writers ask you to do, we just need to think how to approach this one as he wants to match 11 year old *****’s question (editor’s note – name removed) “Why do we have snot?”.

The magazines are priced at £5.99 which may sound a little steep as you can buy a book for the same price, but it is packed with so much information (50 pages in fact!). Every page deserved to be there and served a purpose, unlike many of the kids magazines you can buy which are full of adverts and often pointless pages of nonsense. For a monthly magazine I consider it to be excellent value and something that my children would look forward to receiving. What I especially love about the pricing is that as well as paying monthly or buying copies from WH Smith or Martin MacCalls stores, you can pay for a 6 or 12 month subscription (includes printed and digital copies plus a copy of FACTopia) for £29.99 and £59.99 respectively. My parents and siblings never know what to buy my children at birthdays and Christmas, so this is a good price point for a gift that would be appreciated.

I am a great avoider of screen time and broadening my children’s knowledge whenever possible without it always feeling like they are doing homework. I want them to enjoy learning new things and develop a natural thirst for knowledge as not everything can be learned in school. These magazines are perfect for this, and for creating interesting little humans.

The magazines CEO and Founder Christopher Lloyd stated that “We want children to say “Wow!” with every page they turn”, and I would agree that this is a job well done and a target he has certainly achieved. We LOVE these magazines; a very easy 5 stars out of 5 from my children and I.

Rating: 5/5 stars

RRP: £5.99 per edition

The Britannica Magazine can be purchased here.