New Moon® Turns Teen, Celebrates with Redesign; Girls' Magazine Thriving Despite Ad-Free Stance

New Moon, an alternative magazine for pre-teen girls, is celebrating 13 successful years of publication. The magazine provides girls with a supportive community free of messages from advertisers.

Duluth, MN (PRWEB) August 25, 2005 -- Entering the teenage years is a big event in every girl's life, and it's an equally momentous occasion for New Moon, the magazine edited by and for girls ages 8-14.

New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams turns 13 in September and unveiled a new four-color design in its September/October 2005 issue.

"We've grown up," Clare Dougan, a 13-year-old Girls Editorial Board member, said. "New Moon is a widely-known and respected magazine now, but we've kept our playful spirit!"

The magazine, which helps girls stay strong during the transition of adolescence, is the only national magazine for pre-teen girls that is both advertising-free and edited by girls themselves. New Moon's Girls Editorial Board chooses the theme, editorial content and artwork for each issue; girls from around the world contribute 80 percent of the content.

New Moon's editorial focus - providing a place for girls to tell the world who they are - hasn't changed. In addition to the switch to four-color, the new design offers more space for girls' voices.

"If girls are continually given the opportunity to speak their minds, they'll develop their own character and will know how to be their own person," Siri Harkins, a 13-year-old member of the New Moon Store's Girls Advisory Board, said. "But if girls are continually told what to think, like they are in other magazines, than they might have trouble thinking for themselves in the future."

New Moon's editors currently are searching for girls who radiate inner beauty to profile in its seventh-annual "25 Beautiful Girls" issue, a counter to People's "50 Most Beautiful People." For details, go to www.newmoon.org/magazine/beautifulgirl.htm.

New Moon was founded by Gruver and her husband Joe Kelly in 1992, and the first regular issue was published in September 1993. A six-time winner of a prestigious Parents' Choice Foundation Gold Award for "Best Children's Magazine," New Moon is an international magazine with 30,000 paid subscribers.

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