History
The very first issue, titled Djeca za Djecu ( Children for Children) was published in Zagreb in 1954 by Josip Sabolović, a primary school teacher, and featured contributions by his pupils. The editor-in-chief was Blankica Veselić. The first issue had only four black-and-white pages containing a few essays, drawings and song lyrics made by pupils. Djeca za Djecu soon got very popular so the following issues included contributions by pupils from other Zagreb schools, and eventually, from schools in other cities around the country. As the project grew larger, more adults got involved in it, so the magazine needed a new name. In 1959 a readership poll was held to determine the new name and the winning suggestion was Plava lasta (The Blue Swallow) - but since there was already a newspaper called Plavi vjesnik (The Blue Gazette), it was adapted into Modra lasta (modra and plava being synonymous terms for the color blue in Croatian).
It continued to be published throughout the following decades and it achieved huge readership numbers thanks to the independent distribution network (as it is distributed directly in most primary schools), the emphasis on children's contributions, and its colorful and simple coverage of topics that closely follow the school curriculum.
Read more about this topic: Modra Lasta
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)