Storied history – how Storytime magazine is teaching children the joy of reading, one country at a time
Lulu Skantze was on a trip in the north of Norway when she came up with the idea for what would become Storytime magazine, the hugely popular UK children’s publication. “I was developing content for publishers to be used in kids’ magazines with gifts on the cover and noticed how children were reacting to these publications,” says Skantze. “In Norway I saw kids open the plastic bag, quickly go through the mag before binning it and playing with the toys. I thought – this is a crisis of sorts.
“We spend a lot of time to create this content, which has to be done in a very disposable way because all of the budget goes to the plastic, and the kids are not engaging with the magazine. They actually don’t value the magazine as a product. In the end, there was a whole industry creating magazines for children, but not caring that the content is engaging.”
Fearing this approach would lead to a generation of kids buying magazines for the toys and not the joy of reading, Skantze and business partner Leslie Coathup launched Storytime in 2014 – a publication aimed at children aged 3 to 9 that prioritises compelling storytelling and foregoes the plastic gift on the cover.
Combining fairy tales, legends, myths and modern stories with beautiful illustrations (the magazine has eight different illustrators every issue to keep things fresh) and subtle, positive messaging relating to range of topics including diversity and sustainability, the brand has expanded rapidly, now reaching readers in more than 60 countries.
Storytime is also a social enterprise, the publisher making the print and digital version of the magazine available directly to schools to improve literacy levels. The publisher also works with local councils to fund kids that are below the reading level to receive the magazine at home.
“Stories are the most effective way to teach,” says Skantze. “There are an infinite number of stories in the world, and it’s a great way to approach all subjects we need to talk about, like inclusivity.
“We did a lot of research and there were no story magazines in the UK. All the magazines were branded and had to do with toys or TV shows. There was no magazine that was simply about connecting kids to the power of stories even though a lot of parents want that.”
Storming the fairytale castle
From the outset, Skantze and Coathup planned to go “subscription heavy” with Storytime to make sure they could compete with established children’s magazines.
“Our strategy was that we would be on the newsagents for the first year and then we would cut back to subscription only because it’s much more manageable,” says Skantze. “As a small publisher, competing with children’s magazine that have plastic was always going to be a nightmare when it comes to retail.”
Storytime’s tiered subscription model is divided into offers open to parents and to schools, with the latter including lesson ideas and classroom activities emailed to teachers with each issue.
“When we started, we were not even aware of the education sector,” reveals Skantze. “We started as a parent-child magazine you could read together, but a lot of teachers were buying Storytime and kept writing to us to say they’ve taken the magazine to class and students who never pick up books were reading it. Nowadays our subscription is half schools and half parents.”
The brand recently also launched Storytime Hub – which allows those who sign up instant access to a year’s worth of online magazines and the accompanying class resources, while new a magazine and a set of resources are added each month.
The impact Storytime has had on literacy levels has been eye-catching. The brand’s yearly survey shows that after receiving the magazine for a year, the proportion of children reading for more than the recommended 20 minutes a day doubled.
“Literacy is a great leveller,” says Skantze. “There is no way we’re going to fix what’s broken in society if we don’t get people more equally educated and without reading, we can’t get there.
“We talk a lot about media literacy, how to spot fake news, how to get better ideas – but without the literacy, we can’t teach these things. You have to be able to read and understand what you are reading, and I think that’s where we have failed massively in the last generation.”
Storytime is making sure its message is spreading far and wide through the successful licensing of the brand. “We always created Storytime to be a licensable product,” says Skantze.
“We have created our own licensing programme and database. We structured our content to be able to reach different sectors, so we do a lot of work with EdTech, but we create the process ourselves. We now also support other businesses with their licensing strategy and there is so much potential for magazines when it comes to that.”
The power of paper
For the children of parents who subscribe to Storytime, a treat awaits when it arrives in the mail. Every issue is wrapped in an envelope with a different vibrant artwork and is addressed to the child.
“We started it as a perk when we launched the magazine – to make it like a gift to the child,” says Skantze. “We wanted kids to feel: ‘This is mine, this is made for me’.
“Nobody was doing a magazine that was made for children as a very special object.
Children, as consumers, were almost seen as an afterthought, rather than putting in the work they deserve.”
For Storytime, part of giving kids the experience they deserve is to put a print magazine in their hands. “There’s been a lot of debate about the future of print but there has been a big resurgence with Gen Z buying more paper,” adds Skantze. “And I think kids will be next because paper engages our five senses more than tech. It is something that can’t be ignored.
“It’s important for the development of a child to be engaged in their senses. We found that most people that subscribe to our digital platform also wanted print. It is about having that balance because I really love tech and I’m all for it, but I think we need a bit of everything. To able to disconnect and not have the need to have a plug near you – that feeling is huge for kids as they are growing up.”
Once upon a time…
Ultimately, Storytime stands and falls by the quality of its stories. It comes as no surprise, then, that Skantze and her team of writers pull out all the stops when it comes to finding new story ideas.
“Finding good story ideas is the core of my job,” says Skantze. “I do a lot of reading and research, and I have a couple of people in my team who are storytellers that work with different brands. We literally source it everywhere. Last year, I was in Switzerland by a lake and there was a story of someone who led a group of people across its waters with a fleet of boats. So, I wrote the story down and then I went and researched that legend.
“Or I see something on the news that I would like to have a different ending. There was this story in the UK about a woman who had cats, and no flat would accept her, so she ended up living on the street during lockdown. So, we created a story about a lady who creates a place for cats, and it becomes the happiest place in the neighbourhood.
“What has been interesting is that every country I go to, there are stories that we haven’t heard outside that place. There’s such a huge amount of cultural richness to it.”
Given how good Skantze is as telling stories, you have to wonder – which is the childhood story that most inspired her? “The Snow Queen”, she replies without hesitation. “My grandparents are Italian, and my grandmother had an edition that she read as a child and my mother read. It was always there, and I used to read it a lot.
“I was so special to me because I remember the amazing visual landscape. I always wanted to go to a place like that. I read it every holiday and never got tired of it. I love the connection of that book being passed on from one generation to the next. People treasure that in a way that I want to recreate with Storytime.”
