editors speak

Interview with POCKETS Editor Lynn W. Gilliam
By Pat Tanumihardja

POCKETS is a fun devotional magazine for children around the ages of 6-12 with a different theme for each issue. A children’s advisory board evaluates and makes suggestions for the magazine, and also suggests themes. POCKETS also runs holidays stories that are woven into the theme of the month. Working with themes is not that hard after all. It allows you, as the writer, to focus on what interests the young reader and to be more effective in your writing, as editor Lynn Gilliam explains. A big ‘thank you’ to Lynn for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with Kid Magazine Writers.

KMW: Can you explain why POCKETS decided to go with a theme format and what this means for the potential contributor?
LG: The decision to base the issues around themes was made in the magazine’s beginning, long before I was here. The advantage for us is that it allows us to explore a particular subject in more depth than we could if we were hitting the same topics one story at a time on an occasional basis. What this means for the potential POCKETS writer is that he or she needs to know the themes and keep them in mind in deciding what to submit. It does happen occasionally that we get a really good story that just doesn’t fit any upcoming themes.

KMW: Some writers may be discouraged from submitting to devotional publications like POCKETS because they feel that they do not have the right background to write for them. Is this really the case?
LG: We never want our stories to be preachy or heavy-handed because that is off-putting to the reader, child or adult. Many of our stories are not overtly religious, but a story that weaves faith into the story in a way that will seem realistic to the reader is always a stronger story for us than one that doesn’t do that.

KMW: Is it true that you don’t get all the holiday submissions that you need? Can you give an example of one or two submissions that were just what you were looking for?
LG: It’s actually not so much a matter of not getting enough holiday submissions as it is getting the same plots over and over—the Christmas pageant when everything goes wrong, for instance. It’s a real challenge for writers to find fresh ways to write about these holidays that have been celebrated for so long and about which so much has been written. Two stories that we selected for this past December issue seemed to do that well. A Very Special Advent by Betty Tesh dealt with a family eager for the return of the mom from a military deployment overseas. They’re excited, of course, but they soon realize that Mom won’t have time to do all of the Christmas preparations she usually does for the family. By working through what traditions they can keep the same and what will need to be changed or dropped, they connect their experience with the Advent themes of anticipation and hope. That was a great story to open our December issue because it was really focused on Advent, the season of preparing to celebrate Christ’s birth, which is something we really try to emphasize in our December issue. The story that ended the issue was Our Christmas Guest by Ethel Barton. In this story, at the mother’s urging, the family invites a man from a shelter to have Christmas dinner with them. The son, who is the narrator of the story, is really not happy about the idea. We liked this story because it’s very realistic in that the interaction between the guest and the family is, for the most part, very awkward, and yet the young narrator of the story comes to see this guest as very human and not so different from himself.

KMW: Are there any holidays that are underrepresented in your submissions?
LG: The holidays we include in the magazine are Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We also include the church seasons of Lent and Advent. Submissions are welcome for any of those. Christmas probably draws the most submissions, although more stories with a fresh approach are, as mentioned previously, still very welcome. Thanksgiving and Easter are generally woven into other themes—perhaps new life for Easter or hospitality or blessings for Thanksgiving.

KMW: If a writer wanted to submit a holiday article, what advice would you give on how to tie it in with the theme for the month?
LG: We wouldn’t generally run a holiday story that was strictly about the celebration of the holiday itself. For example, if November has a hospitality theme, a family’s Thanksgiving celebration might be woven into the story but wouldn’t necessarily be the main emphasis of the story. So think more in terms of the issue theme than the holiday itself.

KMW: Are there any upcoming themes that you would like to highlight for our readers? ‘Celebrating our Bodies’ could be quite controversial, are there any types of articles you are looking for specifically?
LG: The emphasis for that issue is on honoring our bodies as gifts from God. We’re primarily interested in helping children understand that no matter how they feel about their bodies—whether they see themselves as too heavy or too thin or too tall or too short or too whatever—they are loved by God just as they are. At the same time we want to emphasize that an important part of honoring our bodies is to treat them with respect by giving them healthy food and appropriate activity and rest. That seems particularly important with the current concerns around the increase in childhood obesity and the serious health risks that accompany that.

KMW: Aside from stories, are there any other departments that could do with more submissions?
LG: We are always interested in submissions for all of our departments—games, poems, activities, and recipes.

KMW: Your website says that you particularly desire articles about children involved in environmental, community, and peace/justice issues. Do you get many submissions along these themes? What exactly are you looking for?
LG: This is probably the one area where we really don’t get enough submissions. We’ve had some wonderful articles for this area, which we call Peacemakers at Work, but often we don’t have as much to choose from as we’d like. This feature is about real kids doing things to be involved in helping their neighbors—in both the most immediate and the most global sense. This encompasses a wide array of activities—everything from helping an elderly neighbor with chores to having birthday parties for kids at a homeless shelter to raising money to help kids in India get life-saving heart surgeries. The best stories for Peacemakers are ones in which a child is the one who has the idea and makes it happen. Two definite pluses for articles for this area are quotes from the child or children about how their faith influences what they’re doing and good photos.

KMW: Do you have any tips for writers hoping to sell to POCKETS? How can they tailor their submissions to what you are looking for at this point in time?
LG: I’m afraid my advice isn’t very original—study the themes, the writer’s guidelines, and the magazine. Themes and guidelines are available on line. A sample of the magazine is available with an SASE. Although this is all pretty obvious, there’s no substitute for it in really understanding the needs of the magazine.

This page last updated on 01 February 2005