Daria Holme is a graphic designer from Mannheim who, in 2010, started something that no publishing professional would have advised. She launched a children's magazine with no advertising, no corporate backing, and no paid contributors. Every artist, photographer, illustrator, writer, and designer who appears in Die Kindertseitung works for free. The magazine is a non-profit project, and the deliberately misspelled title (Tseitung instead of Zeitung) is a signal from the start: this is not your ordinary children's publication.
Each issue is devoted to a single theme, and the themes are chosen with the kind of imaginative precision that makes children feel taken seriously: Fliegen (Flying), Wasser (Water), Alphabet, Stadt (City), Rot (Red), Nacht (Night), Gefaehrlich (Dangerous), Reisen (Travel), Schule (School), Rund (Round). The contributors respond to each theme with original work, and the result is a magazine that looks nothing like the Spongebob-branded, gimmick-laden fare that dominates the children's newsstand. The design is beautiful and varied, the content invites reading, looking, making, thinking, and dreaming, and there is not a single advertisement between the covers.
Published twice yearly at fourteen euros per issue and available through independent bookshops across Germany, Die Kindertseitung has been praised by the Kilifue children's book guide and featured in Himbeer Magazin. It once took over the Einraumhaus in Mannheim for a weekend, inviting children to build their own miniature cities inside the installation. For a magazine that operates without profit, it has built something money cannot buy: a publication that treats children as the intelligent, curious, creative people they actually are.
<a href="http://kindertseitung.de/">Visit Die Kindertseitung