Children's Readers was a chil- dren's periodical which has grown together with Hong Kong children since the 1950s. Its closure in February was not only a closedown of choice for children. To many adults who had been the magazine's loyal readers, it is no less than a personal loss.
More, a new children's periodical, Sunday Yellow Bus, also left the market when Sunday Weekly, to which Sunday Yellow Bus was a supplemented, folded up in March. Facing a keen competition but a declining market, children's readers encounter great difficulties in chasing readership.
Treasure of Intelligence is a traditional and educational children's reader which shares the style of Children's Readers.
Mr. Frankie Yu, its director, said, "Our aim is to provide primary school students with moral education, information, knowledge and 'the true, the good and the beautiful'."
But the sales figures fail to support their ideal or even the publication itself. Right now, it is the other businesses of the company that support Treasure of Intelligence.
Mr. Yu said publishing children's periodicals is becoming more and more difficult with the ever-increasing production costs and an ever-shrinking market. The reasons, he said, are an aging society and decreasing children population in these 10 years. However, he said he would persist in publishing the periodical as it is his interest.
"Children's Readers is my favourite. I remember my wanting to buy it when I was a little boy. But I didn't have enough money," Mr. Yu recalled.
"I don't want to see the disappearance of a good book."
The young illustrator of McMug, Miss Alice Mak, shares this view.
"Many people are working hard to provide children with more alternatives. Any closure in the market would be a bad sign," Ms Mak said.
However, she said that the contents of traditional children's periodicals are too rigid and they force children to accept many educational ideas.
"More cartoons and illustrations should be put into children's periodicals. The text should be easier to make it more attractive," Ms Mak said.
The comics illustrated by Miss Mak, McMug, is well received by children. But McMug is not targeted only at children. Instead, its targets are those who share the same way of living and perspective on life. The book acts as a sharing of daily life to readers of all ages including children.
"The adult world can be shared by the children at the same time - just like all of us like McDonald's and like going to karaokes," Miss Mak said.
The only difference between adults' and children's readers, said Miss Mak, is the presentation of ideas.
Wong Chi Tat, 8, a primary 2 student who periodically reads Treasure of Intelligence, complained that it is too difficult.
His mother, Mrs. Wong Ho Sau Yin, said that Wong Chi Tat would prefer playing with toys or video games to reading periodicals.
The large variety of entertainment that there is, traditional children's periodicals have to fight a hard war to upgrade their priority in children's hierarchy.
But children's literature writer Chau Mat Mat does not regard the market as a contracting one.
"The change is only the children's tastes and the trends in society. I don't think children do not like to read any more," Miss Chau said.
Indeed, the style of children's periodicals has also changed a lot. The traditional ones are more educational. They show the perfect aspects of world and emphasize the moral side of life.The present ones, on the other hand, are more interesting and innovative. They stimulate the children to think, but they contain some rebellious ideas.
Butt Wah Liu, a local writer whose works are beloved by many youngsters, also felt sorry about the fold up of Children's Readers. "Whether it did well or not, I had a kind of love towards it," he said.
"To the whole market, I think it is not only the problem of children's periodicals but also the problem of youngsters' periodicals," Butt Wah Liu said.
Butt Wah Liu has another approach to explain the change. He said that the style of children's periodicals has not changed because children have liked comics and cartoons both in the past and now. The change is mainly their contents.
"Children's periodicals in the past were more educational and traditionally presented. They showed a clear cut between the right and the wrong.
"The trend now is that they are full of violence and sex for the sake of maintaining attractiveness. The writers emphasize individualism, consumptionism and anti-doctrinairism," he continued.
He suggested commercial considerations and the blind faith in freedom of expression as the causes.
"The criterion to define a good children's periodical is now its sales instead of the ideas it brings," he said.
In his opinion, a good children's periodical should be attractive and educational with good standpoints.
"Most adults ask what children want and the publishers just think on the side of the children. All these make the publishers please the children only," he said.
But what the children love is not always good for them. Eating candies is a good example. To Butt Wah Liu, they would lose respect to traditional values and critical thinking, thus leading to consumptionism.
The results, as suggested by Miss Chau, would be: "Children would probably mature earlier. It would help them to enter society easier. On the other hand, by exposing the bad things of the society to the children, some periodicals would thereby confuse them.
"As a result, the period for the childrern to mature may be too short. If the corresponding education is not enough, this may pose harm to them."
As children are pillars of society in the future, the development of children's periodicals is concerned by many.
Miss Mak said, "The market always makes people frustrated as those who run the business are businessmen rather than literature writers." But to her, encouraging is in recent years, more writers began to do more in this field.
"Hong Kong is lacking children literacy work but I begin to notice that the Urban Council and many organizations are promoting this kinds of work in these few years," Miss Chau regarded that as a good trend.
Mr. Yu of Treasure of Intelligence expresses her thankfulness the children literature writers in Hong Kong.
"They have given great effort to improve children's periodicals without many returns," Mr. Yu said.