The Horn Book Magazine
The Horn Book Magazine is the oldest bimonthly magazine dedicated to reviewing children's literature. It was founded in Boston in 1924 by Bertha Mahony Miller and Elinor Whitney Field. The magazine began as a “suggestive purchase list” from The Bookshop for Boys and Girls, the country’s first bookstore for children, which opened in 1916 in Boston as a project of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. The bookstore closed in 1936, but The Horn Book Magazine continued its mission to “blow the horn for fine books for boys and girls.”
In each issue, published every other month, the magazine features articles about issues and trends in children’s literature, essays by authors and artists, and reviews of new books and paperback reprints for children. The writers include staff and guest reviewers such as librarians, teachers, historians and booksellers.
The January issue includes the speeches of the winners of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the July issue includes speeches from the winners of the year’s Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal. In December, the magazine publishes The Fanfare list, the editors’ selection of the best children’s and young adult books of the year. Lists were not published in 1941–1945 or 1955–1958.
The Horn Book Magazine also publishes The Horn Book Guide twice a year. The Guide gives brief reviews and a rating from 1 to 6 and covers almost every children’s book published in the United States.
In 2009, The Horn Book Magazine was purchased by Media Source Inc. (MSI), the company that owns the Junior Library Guild, Library Journal and School Library Journal.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:01 (CET).