How Can I Help My Family Use Print Media Safely?

As with any media your children use, CMCH recommends that parents do their homework and find out more about the content of the magazines, books and comic books their children read.

For magazines, look at the headlines on the cover and the pictures inside. Do they send conflicting messages? Are the messages about taking care of your body in a healthy way? Are the articles focused solely on appearance? Are the images realistic? If you find that the messages conflict with each other or with your own ideas, have an open conversation with your teen about how the messages make them feel.

Actively engage your children in discussion about the books and comic books they read. On top of learning more about the content, your discussion will likely encourage them to think critically about the material.

For book reviews and recommendations, we recommend Book Hive. This site is an excellent resource created by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in North Carolina.  It provides tools to search for books by age and genre, has reviews of books written by both teachers and children, and provides grade specific reading lists.

The site is engaging, so children could use it to tell their parents what books they would like to receive.  Because it is a local site, the “request a book from the library” function will not be useful for the majority of people.