Young Rider Magazine Review

Young Rider Magazine

"The Magazine for Horse & Pony Lovers"

My daughter was bitten by the horse love bug when she was two and we've never found a cure.  In fact, her symptoms just keep escalating with age.  We're treating these symptoms with riding lessons, horseback camps and clinics and visits to farms to groom horses and even clean stalls.  But she can't be in the saddle or even in the barn all of the time so another treatment we have discovered is Young Rider magazine.

Young Rider magazine tauts that it is geared to seven to fifteen year olds and although that is generally a wide spread for readers, I think they really do hit this mark for this audience.

In Every Issue of Young Rider:

Letters to Allie, Reader of the Issue, Horse and Pony Problems, Short Story (horse fiction), Book Bag (horse related books), Horsey Happenings (events in the horse world), and of course there is a good old ad index too.  Unlike American Girl magazine which has no ads, Young Rider does have its' share.

Examples of Features:

Camp Safety Tips, Winter Survival Tips, English Riding, Western Riding, Helping Horses in Need, Money Matters (25 tips for earning money for a horse) and there are also interviews with young horse owners, Olympic champs and horse stars like the girls from The Saddle Club. 

Parents of boys should know...

One thing I will point out is that although it is called "Young Riders" it often really looks like "Young Girl Riders."  The photos are almost exclusively of girls although the information is not girl-biased.  It makes since because statistically there are just are many more young girl riders but I thought parents of boys who ride may want to know this because it hard to find a photo of a young boy rider in this magazine.  

My Viewpoint:  I am well on my way to my goal in life of raising kids who love to read and Young Rider is a great tool for encouraging riders to read.  My daughter loves getting this magazine in the mail and she reads it from cover to cover.  The information is a good combination of practical and fun.