LETTERS
TO THE EDITOR OF
BABYBUG, A MAGAZINE
FOR READERS
AGE 6 MONTHS
TO 2 YEARS.
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Dear Editor:
I read with particular delight your April feature on monkeys, a topic for which I must confess I have an inexhaustible enthusiasm. The story's illustrations were both whimsical and touching. (I especially enjoyed one monkey's difficulty with a party hat!) Please keep the monkey stories coming!
Mackenzie Stephenson
Age 18 months
Toledo, Ohio
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Dear Editor:
Maybe it's just these postmodern times, but I finished your April story on gardens with a painful sense of reader's whiplash. Was it fiction or nonfiction? Your table of contents and editor's note did little to resolve this question, and the story itself was frustratingly self-obfuscating. One moment the reader is getting helpful advice on seed planting and the next a young boy is speaking with a bunny that's wearing an ascot. Please don't throw us so violently down the rabbit hole (pun intended!) again.
Kevin Oberlin
Age 11 months
Missoula, Montana
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Dear Editor:
Not only did I love your story "The Fluffy Duffy Bear" but the entire April issue was a triumph! Not that this was a surprise; I've subscribed since I was 6 months old and have loved every issue. My only complaint—and it's a small one—is with your staple-free design, which I feel implies a certain lack of faith in your readers. Love the rounded corners and nontoxic ink, though. As someone who enjoys scampering around on the kitchen floor with Babybug in her mouth, I can honestly say it's a "chewy" read!
Sydney Blaunik
Age 9 months
Sarasota, Florida
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Dear Editor:
Thank you for finally having the courage to report on barnyard animals playing musical instruments! I have been fruitlessly looking through my parents' "adult" magazines over the last few months for some discussion, however brief, of this dazzling phenomenon, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to finally see it so elegantly addressed in your pages. I eagerly await future stories on goats with guitars.
Edwin Chin
Age 8 months
Manchester, Vermont
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Dear Editor:
It is with frustration and disappointment that I inform you that I am canceling my subscription to Babybug following the April issue. I am doing this not only because I have just passed my second birthday (on April 28!) and have begun to feel the attendant inclination toward Ladybug, your magazine for 2- to 6-year-olds. I had planned to linger among the beloved pages of my toddlerhood just a little longer, but that changed after Babybug's dramatic drop in quality since January. Now, I'm willing to accept dancing koalas, preachy old frogs, and singing daffodils, but the strident tone adopted by so many of your characters recently (Exhibit A: "The Fluffy Duffy Bear") has become tiresome and grating. Also, your stories too often reach facile conclusions (Exhibit B: "Singing With Our Barnyard Friends"). And the jarring deus ex machina so crudely inserted into "Monkey's Birthday Party" was, for me, the limit. I can't tell you how sorry I am to mark my youth's end with so artless an issue.
Isabella Dunwhitty
Age 2 years and 1 month
New York, New York
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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Letters to the Editor of Babybug, a Magazine for Readers Age 6 Months to 2 Years By Michael Depp
Three Selections From The Masochist's Cookbook By Jeff Michaels
Nostalgic Remembrances of Things That Haven't Happened Yet By Eric Wiener
Ivan Lendl, Former Tennis Champion and Current Landscape-Painting Teacher in the Goshen, Connecticut, Community Center By Teddy Wayne
The Believer June/July Music Issue Is Here
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