As one child wrote to us, 'Kids need to know that they are not alone.' Like you, we hope that this will be over soon." "We want our readers to see themselves and their experiences in our magazines, so we've included masks and acknowledgements of the pandemic to help support kids. As one child wrote to us, \u201cKids need to know that they are not alone.\u201d Like you, we hope that this will be over soon. We want our readers to see themselves and their experiences in our magazines, so we've included masks and acknowledgements of the pandemic to help support kids. Many, many snarky comments followed, but Highlights responded with what is probably the most perfect reaction. If you think the complaint seems rather asinine considering we've been wearing masks for two years, you're not alone. I am planning to screen future issues, and if more of this content is present, we will be trashing them and canceling our subscription. We get your magazine to be an escape, not a reminder of the reality we're forced to be living right now. Getting these magazines with mask illustrations is a reminder of the broken world we live in. Masks are a temporary situation and on their way out the door. That is not a message I'm sending to my kids. "I understand the objective here: to normalize masking young children. I recall being taught to address professionals in a business letter with a bit more courtesy, but perhaps Mrs. "Stop with the mask illustrations," the subject line reads before the blunt opening, "Christine." (Christine French Cully is the magazine's editor-in-chief. She also shared the email she sent to the editor of the magazine. Bethany Mandel shared a photo of a page of the magazine that showed a child playing the piano on a stage and kids in the audience behind the piano wearing masks. And not only do some of these folks not want to wear masks, they don't even want to see people wearing masks.Ī mom on Twitter even went so far as to call out the popular children's magazine Highlights for including illustrations that show children wearing masks. It's hard to believe that there are still anti-maskers at this point in a viral pandemic, but here we are. That means vaccines, limiting group gatherings and, of course, masking in public places. The virus and its various mutations don't give a flying fig how we feel, and with a new variant knocking on our door, we're still knee deep in mitigation measures to try to keep our healthcare system from sinking. That doesn't mean we are done, of course. We're heading into year three of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we're all ready to be done.