35th Anniversary Readers’ Choice Edition

Additional Web content at kids.nationalgeographic.com

Happy Birthday, NG Kids! — To celebrate its 35th anniversary, National Geographic Kids (formerly National Geographic World) dedicates a special Readers’ Choice Edition of the magazine to its readers. To create the special edition, National Geographic Kids gave its Kids Advisory Board of more than 600 readers a list of 20 topics — everything from space to pets to cities to sports — and asked them to pick their favorites. The result: an issue jam-packed with six feature stories about the topics that interest kids most. The six special sections each contain 35 cool facts in honor of National Geographic Kids’ 35th birthday. Special sections include:

35 Cool Things About Pets: Parrots don’t have vocal cords; a cat’s heart beats twice as fast as a human’s; mice can have 50 babies a year; the oldest koi fish lived to be 226 years old; a St. Bernard named Barry was said to have saved more than 40 people during his life.

35 Cool Things About Guinness World Records: The record for the most M&Ms eaten with chopsticks in one minute is 42; a man blew out 151 candles in one breath, the most on record; dipped in 18-carat gold, the most expensive sneakers cost $4,053; the tallest snow person on Earth, measuring 122 feet, 1 inch tall, took a month to build.

35 Cool Things About the Future: You’ll pump your car full of biofuel algae grown in artificial saltwater lakes in deserts; wireless electricity will be beamed through the air to power homes, cars and airplanes; smart houses will check the weather for more efficient heating and cooling.

35 Cool Things About Animals: Kangaroo rats can survive without drinking water; a rock python can go a year between meals; honeybees have hair on their eyeballs; a great white shark must swim, or it will sink; some spiders catch and eat fish.

35 Cool Things About Rocks and Minerals: There are more than 4,000 known minerals; natural ice formations, such as icebergs and icicles, are considered minerals; an Australian man found a 60-pound gold nugget using a metal detector; ancient humans chipped away at flint to make arrowheads and other sharp weapons and tools.
35 Cool Things About Space: If you’re 12 years old on Earth, then you’d be about six on Mars and almost 50 on Mercury; astronauts get two to three inches taller while living at the International Space Station; one volcano on Mars is more than three times as tall as Mount Everest; the largest comets come from the outer edge of our solar system — more than 80 billion miles from the sun.

National Geographic Kids, a multitopic, photo-driven magazine for 6- to 14-year-olds, empowers its readers by making it fun to learn about the world. Its numerous industry awards include Periodical of the Year in 2005 and 2006 from the Association of Educational Publishers. Published 10 times a year, National Geographic Kids has a circulation of 1.1 million and is available by subscription for $19.95 a year and on newsstands for $4.99 a copy. Its website is at kids.nationalgeographic.com.

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Contacts:
Ethan Fried
202-857-7037
efried@ngs.org