Highlights Kids’ Magazine Is Finally Going Digital

For nearly seven decades, Highlights magazine has been used to comfort anxious young souls trapped in dentists’ offices and pediatrician waiting rooms. The publication says it has a circulation of more than 2 million, which would put it past those of Rolling Stone or the New Yorker, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media. But Highlights has not had much success translating the familiar cartoons, puzzles, and wholesome edutainment to the gadgets in which kids are increasingly burying their faces.

So Highlights for Children, the magazine’s publisher, is turning to a San Francisco startup to help it connect with a mobile generation. The company is teaming up with Fingerprint Digital, a five-year-old venture that specializes in games for kids. Fingerprint will help develop and distribute at least three Highlights-branded applications over the course of the companies’ four-year partnership.