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| More! is no more – and that's a sad message for tomorrow's teenagers | More! is no more – and that's a sad message for tomorrow's teenagers |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| This weekend, two halves of my childhood died, albeit very different deaths. First came the announcement on Saturday night that EL Konigsburg, the wonderful children's author, had died at the age of 83 after a career spanning 45 years. Now, as Konigsburg was American she is not quite as well-known in Britain as she is in the US, where I grew up. There, she is pretty much required reading for anyone under the age of 11 and, indeed, over, too, and I strongly urge everyone who falls into either age group to discover her forthwith. One of her best known books, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, about a young brother and sister running away from home and living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dominated my imagination in the way only a really good book can wholly inhabit the head of a child, and it deservedly brought Konigsburg a Newbery award in 1968. Another of her books, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth (Konigsburg was commendably unafraid of long titles for children) was named as an honour book that year, making Konigsburg the first and still only writer to have won the Newbery and been a runner-up in the same year. | This weekend, two halves of my childhood died, albeit very different deaths. First came the announcement on Saturday night that EL Konigsburg, the wonderful children's author, had died at the age of 83 after a career spanning 45 years. Now, as Konigsburg was American she is not quite as well-known in Britain as she is in the US, where I grew up. There, she is pretty much required reading for anyone under the age of 11 and, indeed, over, too, and I strongly urge everyone who falls into either age group to discover her forthwith. One of her best known books, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, about a young brother and sister running away from home and living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dominated my imagination in the way only a really good book can wholly inhabit the head of a child, and it deservedly brought Konigsburg a Newbery award in 1968. Another of her books, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth (Konigsburg was commendably unafraid of long titles for children) was named as an honour book that year, making Konigsburg the first and still only writer to have won the Newbery and been a runner-up in the same year. |
| When I heard that she had died, I promptly went back to my bookshelf and spent my Saturday night re-reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, and it was, if anything, even more wonderful than I remembered. Some people might think that getting into bed at 9pm and reading a book for children is a bit of a tragic way for a thirtysomething woman to spend a Saturday night. More fool them. | When I heard that she had died, I promptly went back to my bookshelf and spent my Saturday night re-reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, and it was, if anything, even more wonderful than I remembered. Some people might think that getting into bed at 9pm and reading a book for children is a bit of a tragic way for a thirtysomething woman to spend a Saturday night. More fool them. |
| On Monday morning, the bells tolled for a later part of my childhood: More! magazine. While Konigsburg (along with her fan Judy Blume) made up my mental landscape until I was about 12, More! and its sister magazines, Just 17 (as it was then), Minx and Nova (and, in very different ways, Empire and Smash Hits) were my gospels during my pre-teen and early teen years. They were girly, silly and, to varying degrees, sexy, and were each such determinedly strong advocates of safe sex that for years I didn't even know it was possible to have sex without a condom. There were features, I vaguely remember, especially in Minx which had particularly good writing. But it was the problem pages that really sang to my soul, especially the advice from Just 17's agony aunts, Melanie McFadyean and Anita Naik, whose byline photos are still as familiar in my mind as old family pictures. | On Monday morning, the bells tolled for a later part of my childhood: More! magazine. While Konigsburg (along with her fan Judy Blume) made up my mental landscape until I was about 12, More! and its sister magazines, Just 17 (as it was then), Minx and Nova (and, in very different ways, Empire and Smash Hits) were my gospels during my pre-teen and early teen years. They were girly, silly and, to varying degrees, sexy, and were each such determinedly strong advocates of safe sex that for years I didn't even know it was possible to have sex without a condom. There were features, I vaguely remember, especially in Minx which had particularly good writing. But it was the problem pages that really sang to my soul, especially the advice from Just 17's agony aunts, Melanie McFadyean and Anita Naik, whose byline photos are still as familiar in my mind as old family pictures. |
| If Just 17 was like my best friend, all giggles and sweetness, More! was like one of those older and cooler girls at school who hung out behind the smoking shed, eyes heavily outlined with kohl; she would talk to you about terrifying, enthralling things such as how her boyfriend likes blow jobs. She was knowing, frightening and funny. Back in the day – and "the day" in this context means the late 80s and early to mid 90s – More! was really rather brilliant. Scary as hell, but brilliant. | If Just 17 was like my best friend, all giggles and sweetness, More! was like one of those older and cooler girls at school who hung out behind the smoking shed, eyes heavily outlined with kohl; she would talk to you about terrifying, enthralling things such as how her boyfriend likes blow jobs. She was knowing, frightening and funny. Back in the day – and "the day" in this context means the late 80s and early to mid 90s – More! was really rather brilliant. Scary as hell, but brilliant. |
| So when I heard the news about its imminent demise I went to my corner newsagent and did something I'd been way too scared and uncool to do when I was 14: I bought a copy for myself, as opposed to waiting for my best friend to buy one and then nicking it off her. In all brutal honesty, Konigsburg has held up better over the past 45 years than More! has over half that time. | So when I heard the news about its imminent demise I went to my corner newsagent and did something I'd been way too scared and uncool to do when I was 14: I bought a copy for myself, as opposed to waiting for my best friend to buy one and then nicking it off her. In all brutal honesty, Konigsburg has held up better over the past 45 years than More! has over half that time. |
| This is not entirely More!'s fault, and the first and most important thing to say about its closure is what a very sorry development this is for the magazine's 22 members of staff, none of whom should be blamed for More!'s sad end. Rather, it reflects a common problem blighting magazines for teenagers these days and explains why all of them should be worried about what has happened to More! | This is not entirely More!'s fault, and the first and most important thing to say about its closure is what a very sorry development this is for the magazine's 22 members of staff, none of whom should be blamed for More!'s sad end. Rather, it reflects a common problem blighting magazines for teenagers these days and explains why all of them should be worried about what has happened to More! |
| While More's famous Position of the Week is still part of the magazine (in my day it was merely once a fortnight, and it is no longer a cartoon but rather modelled by plastic dolls who, for some unexplained reason, are wearing underwear, which would surely confuse teenagers even more than the positions themselves always did), the rest is pretty unrecognisable from the days when I read it. Like all magazines aimed at teens and young women, More! has chased the internet's tail, determinedly trying to overcome the fact that most of its readers now rely on websites such as Mail Online and tmz.com for their trashy news by attempting to ape them. While More! is not as bad as magazines such as Closer at gawping at female celebrities' cellulite, it has, as times have become more straitened and circulation has fallen from a 1m high to 100,000, been petrified into a predictable formula: a mix of tenuous celebrity gossip, interviews with D-list celebrities and "real women" fashion. Ultimately, it looks like a cut-price version of Grazia. | While More's famous Position of the Week is still part of the magazine (in my day it was merely once a fortnight, and it is no longer a cartoon but rather modelled by plastic dolls who, for some unexplained reason, are wearing underwear, which would surely confuse teenagers even more than the positions themselves always did), the rest is pretty unrecognisable from the days when I read it. Like all magazines aimed at teens and young women, More! has chased the internet's tail, determinedly trying to overcome the fact that most of its readers now rely on websites such as Mail Online and tmz.com for their trashy news by attempting to ape them. While More! is not as bad as magazines such as Closer at gawping at female celebrities' cellulite, it has, as times have become more straitened and circulation has fallen from a 1m high to 100,000, been petrified into a predictable formula: a mix of tenuous celebrity gossip, interviews with D-list celebrities and "real women" fashion. Ultimately, it looks like a cut-price version of Grazia. |
| It's a real shame for More! but also for teenagers. I feel rather sorry for them that while they may now get up-to-the minute information about what's happening between Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber, they won't have that weekly appointment at the newsagent, a concept that will doubtless seem as anachronistic in a few years as illuminated manuscripts. Children's literature, happily, isn't going anywhere and is, so far, refraining from competing with the Mail Online. I'd like to write the obvious moral to this story here but I think I'll follow Konigsburg's more subtle approach and quietly leave the reader to draw their own conclusion. | It's a real shame for More! but also for teenagers. I feel rather sorry for them that while they may now get up-to-the minute information about what's happening between Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber, they won't have that weekly appointment at the newsagent, a concept that will doubtless seem as anachronistic in a few years as illuminated manuscripts. Children's literature, happily, isn't going anywhere and is, so far, refraining from competing with the Mail Online. I'd like to write the obvious moral to this story here but I think I'll follow Konigsburg's more subtle approach and quietly leave the reader to draw their own conclusion. |
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