We've been extremely lucky enough to take a look at the very first issue of a new magazine for children that follows the (thankfully) growing trend of ditching horribly intrusive advertising, awful TV tie-ins and rubbishy plastic gimmicks in favour of brilliant and engaging content.

Storytime Magazine is the new kid on the block, with the first issue now available. We love stories and so we couldn't wait to dive into the initial selection, chosen from a variety of traditional tales, myths and legends and well-loved classics.

The magazine is a bold and colourful design, with large format pages perfect for curling up with on your lap. Because the stories are fairly short, it's a great magazine to read over the course of a few bedtimes.

We read through the magazine several times but kept coming back to "Perseus and the Gorgon" which digs into the rich tapestry of Greek myths and legends to tell a tale of a brave warrior, a nefarious king and the infamous Medusa, whose gaze can turn a person to stone!

An example spread showing the gorgeous quality of the artwork and the exciting stories in store!

As you can see from the example spread above, the illustrations are utterly gorgeous and the text is perfectly balanced between entertaining enough for you to read to your little ones yourself, and easy enough for them to have a go at reading the stories themselves as their reading confidence grows.

As well as stories, the magazine plans to have activities and games (in fact you can play a Hare and Tortoise board game in this very issue! Just find a dice and some counters and you're away!)

It's an extremely high quality magazine for a modest price, perfect for discovering new stories, or rediscovering ones that you may already know but want a slightly less "Disneyfied" version of. The passionate team of three (yes, THREE!) behind the magazine so obviously love what they do, and because they love stories as much as your children do, they pass on their energy and enthusiasm perfectly here.

Produced and designed in conjunction with educational experts to ensure that the magazine is suitable for a range of ages and abilities, it's an absolutely blisteringly good start for a publication we'll be keeping a very close eye on in future issues.

Absolutely love this treatment of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!

Storytime Magazine is available for the extremely reasonable price of £3.99 per monthly issue, with subscription details available from the Storytime Website.

(Issue 1 kindly sent to us for review by Storytime Magazine).