The Relationship of Aesthetic Value in Children’s Magazine and Reading’s Interest

Abstract

Statistics indicated that Malaysians are still far away to be classified as a “reading society” with less than 3 hours per week spent for reading. Government and non-governmental organisations are still debating and implementing reading campaigns, initiatives and efforts aimed at promoting and cultivating reading interest among society especially children. With several debates among experts on this subject, one key component contributing to reading interest is the aesthetic values of the publication. According to a survey of the literature, aesthetic values can be classified as visual or sensory experience. The aesthetic value is crucial in the production of children's magazines since it is viewed as a factor in attracting children's reading attention. Hence this study aims to identify the aesthetic values in children’s magazine, to identify reading interest, and to determine the relationship of both variables. The quantitative method and purposive sampling technique were used in this study. The data were taken from questionnaire that has been distributed to pre-school teachers from Tabika Kemas Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. In summary, the results indicated that the aesthetic value of storytelling showed a high relationship with interest in reading (r = 0.701, sig = 0.00) compared to genre (r = 0.493, sig = 0.00) and design (r = 0.484, sig = 0.00).