Your Child’s First Magazine – Wild Animal Babies from the National Wildlife Federation

While children are usually easy to buy gifts for, it does pose a challenge when you actually have to ship the presents. So last year, instead of toys, my mother-in-law gave each of my children a subscription to a magazine. My son received National Wildlife Federation Wild Animal Baby.

What You Get
A one year subscription to Wild Animal Baby is 10 issues for about $20. No issues are published in January or September. Each book like issue is about 6" square and made of sturdy, coated cardboard pages. The entire magazine is animal themed and is recommended for children ages 1-4. There is no outside advertising in the magazine, and the only ad is a small one on the inside of the back cover for other National Wildlife Federation products.

Inside the Magazine
Each issue follows the same basic format. The front cover features realistic sketches of the featured animal, some common like birds and penguins while others may be less familiar to toddlers such as flamingos and baboons. The first feature is always a short narrative about the cover animal with full color photography of the child and parent of the species and simple animal facts.

Other features include animal matching where children look at an animal cracker, cloud or outline of an animal on one page and find the corresponding animal on the facing page. Another animal search gets children practicing their listening skills by find the mouse in the nest or next to the spider or the animal with five arms. Wild Shapes has a small animal scene made with foam shapes while on the opposite page are the shapes children need to find in the picture. There is a finger rhyme to play as well as a short story featuring preschoolers and, of course, animals. At the end there is the opportunity to go back through the magazine and look for the five Sammy Skunks hidden on pages as well as some close-ups of other scenes.

Our Experience
We have been receiving Wild Animal Baby for over a year now, but it is only in the last few months that Nearly Four has become interested in them. Wild Animal Baby is an interactive book and that is something my son just loves. He likes finding the right object in the pictures, doing the finger play to the poems and looking at the "so cute" animals. Simply by reading these magazines so often he has picked up some simple animals facts, like a baby penguin is called a chick. All of the illustrations and photographs are bright and designed to capture a child's attention. We can "do" an issue cover to cover in less than 10 minutes, which I think is a good length for the target age group.

I do think there are some things that Wild Animal Baby could improve upon. Every time we read the moose issue my son argues that the animals are cows or horses not moose. To my son, and I think most preschoolers, moose have large antlers, while this issues features babies and a mother, none of which have the familiar antlers. I also think some of the animals are too generically labeled particularly fish and birds; I'd love to be able to tell my son what kind of fish or bird they are. Some are named in the small photograph copyrights at the bottom of the page, but sometimes they are still generically named and if the animals are drawn instead of photographed I have no chance of figuring it out.

Final Thoughts
Despite some small opportunities for improvement, Wild Animal Baby is a great magazine for toddlers and preschoolers. I can see my son enjoying these issues for at least another year. After that, I still plan to hold onto them as they will be great for cutting out pictures for school projects since they hold up better then typical paper magazines.

While $20 may seem like a lot to pay for a magazine subscription for a child, it works out to just $2 per issue. And unlike most other magazines these can be enjoyed over and over again, just like any other book you might buy for a child. At $2 per book Wild Animal Baby is a real bargain and a gift that keeps on giving for an entire year.