Cicada Print Magazine

If you have an avid young reader this magazine is great.

We gave this magazine as a gift to our granddaughter who will soon be 14. Our Library director recommended this magazine as suitable for gifted children who enjoy poetry. Our granddaughter writes her own poetry. She likes Cicada so much she asked us to renew it.

The magazine is well done. The artwork is great and it is an interesting mix of short stories and poems and illustrations and comics.My only complaint is some of the content. My son is 11 and reads well above his age. He read the entire Harry Potter series years ago. He is certainly at 14 year old reading level, which is the low end of the age recommended for the magazine. I assumed that meant the reading level and not explicit content. Even if he was 14, I would not want to give him a kid's magazine that had a comic strip where someone says "Oh Sh*t". (I am censoring here - it wasn't censored in the magazine). And a story where a girl pulls up her shirt and bra to show her "tits". That is actually how it was presented.So, the magazine is good but you should be aware of what kind of content is in there.

I have 5 grandchildren who have all been getting magazines from Cricket since they were in the "Ladybug" stage. The magazines are a tad expensive, but they are beautifully done, on quality paper, and have no advertising. It is also nice that you can change to a different magazine at any time, which is great as the kids grow and their interests change. Also, you can get a digital, or print + digital subscription, in addition to just the print subscription. That said, I must warn you about this company's customer service-it is horrible. First of all, they are terribly unorganized. Have been trying for 3 years to get all 5 of these magazines filed under one account number, and for some reason that seems to be impossible with this company. Second, they start sending out renewal notices 6 months before the subscription ends and send them about every 2 weeks - it is just overkill and a waste of paper. And last, but not least, their phone customer service lines are only open Monday-Friday for about 10 hours each day. Very poor. I will continue to buy these magazines because the kids really like them and would be disappointed if I didn't get them, but I must admit that I will be VERY happy when they have outgrown them and I can stop doing business with this company.

I'm in my mid-20s now but I received Cicada when I was a teenager and I loved them. The stories and poems were stimulating and I always dreamed of submitting my own work (though I never did). I hope this is still around when I have teens in the house.

In no way is this suitable for a 14 year old. My daughter ordered this from a school fundraising packet. I started thumbing through the pages and found instances of lunch room murders, drug use, kids self identifying as whores, r rated language, public nudity, and demon possession as a "super fun and easy activity."This subscription is getting cancelled.

In cicada you catch lots of words you might not know . You learn more and have fun at the same time! You might get bored ,but like me you should remind yourself you are learning not playing so bye for now . Bye bye

This is a preteen/early teen mag. Lots of good writing. Well edited, has some tough stuff as written by kids themselves. It's a good magazine and is argued over for the first reading.