When veteran schoolteachers Garry and Caroline Myers launched Highlights for Children in June 1946, its circulation was 20,000. The advertising-free monthly magazine, which celebrated its 60th anniversary last June, today goes to about 2 million readers a month, via subscriptions to children and families, schools and libraries, plus doctors and dentists who keep it in their waiting rooms. "We have a very broad age range of subscribers," the Columbus, Ohio-based CEO says, "but we are currently most popular with five- to 11-year-olds." Highlights' tagline from the outset has been "Fun with a Purpose." 

Q. You're adding Highlights High Five for preschoolers in January. Are there other expansions or new directions ahead, now that you've passed your 60th anniversary and sold one billion copies of Highlights for Children?
A. From the beginning, the Highlights mission has included serving children ages 2 to 12 and our decision to launch Highlights High Five reflects our belief that we can create a great magazine for early childhood, and thus better serve more children and parents. As we continue to develop our Highlights catalog and the http://www.highlights.com/ e-commerce site, we will add preschool products that support our notion of "celebrating early childhood."

Q. What would you say has been your most popular article, the one that generated the most response, whether from children, parents or educators?
A. "Hidden Pictures" is probably the most popular feature in the magazine as well as on our interactive website for kids, http://www.HighlightsKids.com/ This popularity encouraged us to create a variety of Hidden Pictures books, a board game and other products. Our "Dear Highlights" advice column is very popular, and right now, a new feature called "Ask Arizona" is generating a lot of email and mail from kids. That's proved so popular that we recently added "Arizona Zone" to our website to provide our readers with another way to connect with Arizona. Turning to the issue of reader response, what I care most about is that our magazine inspires children to do or create something. It might be a craft activity or science experiment they see in our pages.

Q. Does it scare you when you see stories in the news media—not to mention watching those Jay Leno segments on the Tonight Show—about how little Americans seem to know about our Presidents, our history in general and about the geography of both our country and the world?
A. If only they had read Highlights when they were children! Actually, it doesn't particularly scare me; it's too easy to take potshots at the man on the street and get a quick laugh. In my view, these pieces trivialize the substantial challenges our education system faces and also minimize the great success and achievement of many students. The Highlights philosophy includes the notion that children are capable of much more that people often assume—in terms of their ability to think and reason. As a result, we avoid talking down to children. We have high expectations of what they can understand and accomplish. If, as a society, we could maintain such high expectations through to adulthood, maybe we would see fewer of the stories you mention.

Q. Highlights was started by two longtime teachers. Has the magazine ever done profiles of noteworthy teachers in the magazine or on your website—whether chosen from among the various "teachers of the year" awardees or someone like best-selling author and raconteur Frank McCourt?
A. Highlights has published many profiles of notable people, both famous and non-famous, but we have tended not to emphasize teachers specifically. Often these profiles are written by the individuals themselves and include some perspective about their childhood, to help our readers identify with them. Kofi Annan, Henry Winkler, Michael Dell, Kathryn Sullivan (the first woman astronaut) and many others have contributed in this way. Not only do we want our readers to learn about what these people have contributed to their communities, we want our readers to be inspired, to imagine what they themselves can achieve.