Fun For Kidz Magazine – All About Dogsб 2026

Summary

Fun For Kidz March/April 2026 turns its 30 pages entirely over to dogs, headlining Newfoundland Seaman, the $20 dog Meriwether Lewis bought in 1803 Pittsburgh and walked 4,142 miles to the Pacific with the Corps of Discovery, while Alpharetta's Lionheart School teaches 11-year-old Max and his classmates to raise golden retriever service puppies.

Fun For Kidz, the bi-monthly Bluffton, Ohio magazine for ages 6-12, dedicates its March/April 2026 issue to dogs. The dog-themed number collects nine feature articles, a four-page comic, two short stories, a six-puzzle brain-stretcher, and reader letters, with breeds from the mop-coat Komondor to the blue-tongued Chow Chow appearing across the pages. Subscriptions run $32.95 for six issues from PO Box 227.

The centerpiece is Stephanie Kelley's 'From Sea to Shining Sea… Well, Almost,' told by Seaman himself, the $20 Newfoundland Captain Meriwether Lewis bought in 1803 Pittsburgh. Julie Closson's 'Little Paws, Big Helpers' visits Alpharetta's Lionheart School, where students with autism socialize golden retriever puppies from Paws for People before formal service training. The breed roundup profiles Komondor, Irish Wolfhound, Chinese Crested, Chow Chow, and Greyhound with one signature fact each.

Kids solve Wrinkle Dog Sudoku, Name That Dog breed riddles, a Mystery Picture hidden puzzle, Fraction-nition, Puppy Love, and a Dog Tricks logic grid. A mirror experiment flips DOG into DOC upside down. 'You Can Draw a Dog' walks through a dozen named shapes. Comic 'Go Home, Bob' and Phyllis Raybin Emert's school-mascot story 'My Friend Jack' deliver humor for early readers, while Ziggy's Mail Zone prints reader letters from Minnesota to Vermont.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story

p.20 · From Sea to Shining Sea… Well, Almost

Seaman, a black Newfoundland, narrates his 1804-1806 trek with Captains Lewis and Clark across 4,142 miles to the Pacific and back, including Sacajawea joining the corps, babysitting her newborn, surviving a beaver leg bite, warding off a camp buffalo, and getting mistaken for a bear by Native Americans. Stephanie Kelley retells the true expedition through a dog's eyes, then closes with a 'True Story' sidebar naming the May 14, 1804 start, the September 21, 1806 return to Saint Charles, Missouri, and the $20 purchase price. Actionable takeaway: read the 'True Story' sidebar after the fiction and circle every detail that matches real history.

▸ Features & Breeds

p.9 · Little Paws, Big Helpers

At Lionheart School in Alpharetta, Georgia, students with autism hold, talk to, and bathe golden retriever puppies from Paws for People. The puppies learn to ignore wheelchairs and firefighters in full gear while the kids build social confidence, and after four months the dogs graduate to formal service training. Eleven-year-old Max tells a TV interviewer he remembers every puppy's name 'because I love them!' Actionable takeaway: phone a local shelter and ask whether your child can help socialize trainee puppies on weekends.

p.14 · Really Unusual Dogs

Five unique breeds get a paragraph each plus three personality words. Komondor's mop-cord coat scares bears away from sheep. Irish Wolfhounds stand seven feet tall on hind legs yet stay gentle. Chinese Crested dogs have working sweat glands and once chased ship rats for Chinese sailors. Chow Chows have 44 teeth, blue-black tongues, and walk on perfectly straight back legs. Greyhounds hit 45 mph then nap the day away. Actionable takeaway: pick your favorite breed and ask a librarian for a children's book about it.

p.24 · A Dog's Nose, Knows

Melanie Brown explains why a dog's sense of smell beats ours by up to one million times. The cold, wet nose catches floating scent molecules and routes them to a 300-million-receptor smell membrane feeding a brain area 40 times larger than ours. A ranked top-10 sniffer list leads with the Bloodhound, whose long hanging ears and loose facial skin trap scent particles so the wind cannot blow them away. Actionable takeaway: hide a treat under one of three cups, shuffle them, and see whether your dog picks the right cup.

▸ Stories & Comics

p.4 · Go Home, Bob

Barbara A. Smith's four-page Chris Sabatino-illustrated comic follows Matt, who promises his mom he will clean up after dog Bob, then leaves Bob at the ballpark to chase a 50%-off baseball card sale at The Sports Spot. Bob vanishes, Matt and his dad drive around town searching, his mom calls the animal shelter, and a police officer brings Bob home the next morning. Actionable takeaway: make a kid-friendly 'chores-for-pet-care' checklist before promising a parent you can handle a dog.

p.10 · My Friend Jack

Phyllis Raybin Emert's illustrated short story builds around Remy, whose parents keep hearing wild stories about classmate Jack: he drinks from the goldfish bowl, gets painted red by kindergartners, sleeps through class, and sneaks into every class picture. The reveal at open house is that Jack is the school mascot, a snoring medium-sized white dog who has spent years wandering in from the neighborhood. Actionable takeaway: read the story aloud and stop before the open-house scene so kids can predict what Jack really is.

p.28 · Cowboy Clark & Violet

Cowboy Clark the herding dog howls over missing friend Larry the Junior, who has moved to the Elfman farm. When a shimmering white dog named Violet arrives next door playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from the backyard, his chatty cat Mrs. Whiskers teases him for drooling. He stumbles through an invitation to share his country-music taste. Actionable takeaway: pair the violet and cowboy themes with simple music-listening prompts – ask kids which song they would play for a brand-new neighbor.

▸ Puzzles & Facts

p.16 · Puzzles

Six puzzles fill two pages: a Liz Ball Mystery Picture hidden-picture puzzle, a Wrinkle Dog Sudoku using letters W-R-I-N-K-L-E for the Shar-Pei, a Name That Dog riddle grid matching nine breeds to etymology clues, Fraction-nition, a Puppy Love letter-clue puzzle, and a Dog Tricks Teaser logic grid. Solutions appear on page 30 with a 'CLOCKER SPANIEL' punchline for Fraction-nition and 'PAL' for Puppy Love. Actionable takeaway: solve Name That Dog as a family – parents guess the etymology while kids guess the breed.

p.18 · 10 Dog-Gone Facts

Ten short dog facts fill one page with photo callouts: smell up to a million times stronger than humans, vocabulary equal to a toddler, unique nose prints, no two Dalmatians share a spot pattern, St. Bernard is the heaviest breed, Chihuahua is the smallest, Picasso was a dog lover, a 'smile' usually means relaxed, and dogs appear in family and holiday portraits. Actionable takeaway: pick one fact and teach it to a friend or family member at dinner tonight.

▸ Activities & Regulars

p.26 · You Can Draw a Dog

Nancy Dodd Thompson breaks a dog into a dozen named shapes – arches, short pipes, scribbles, slanting lines, an almost-circle with a peak, two smiles, a stem, an oval, a dish, three hills, and three blades of grass. Each step pairs a shape name with a simple sketch so kids build a dog piece by piece rather than copying a finished outline. Actionable takeaway: draw the same dog once from a photo and once from imagination, then compare how the shapes change.

p.27 · "DOG" Is a Magic Word

Hold a paper reading DOG up to a mirror and it flips horizontally; turn the paper upside down and the G reads wrong, but D and O stay correct because they look the same flipped. The piece then lists the ten mirror alphabet letters – B C D E H I K N O X – and suggests mirror words like KID, DID, HIDE, I, and HI. Actionable takeaway: print the mirror alphabet and challenge kids to write their own name using only those ten letters.

p.29 · Kidz Corner

Ziggy's Mail Zone prints four letters from readers ages 9-10 in Rochester MN, Bennington VT, Youngstown NY, Merced CA, and Canfield OH, plus a 60-word story 'Mango Tree and Banana Tree Are Friends' by six-year-old Keerti Kaushik. Submissions go to kidzcorner@funforkidz.com or PO Box 227, Bluffton, OH 45817. Actionable takeaway: have your child dictate a letter to Ziggy the dog and mail it – the magazine actually replies.

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Editor's Take

The March/April 2026 'All About Dogs' issue is built around one strong narrative – Seaman, the $20 Newfoundland who walked to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark – and the rest of the magazine smartly orbits it. Julie Closson's 'Little Paws, Big Helpers' is the quiet star, modeling the kind of human-animal bond the issue keeps celebrating. The breed pages and the Top 10 Sniffers list double as a mini reference guide that kids will quote at school. Where the issue frays is in its reading-level mix, with several pages of small-print comic dialogue aimed at stronger readers and almost no ads to clutter the page. Best for ages 7-11, especially dog-owning families and elementary classrooms running a pets or westward-expansion unit.

Strengths
• Packed with breed facts they can repeat at school the next day
• Seaman story doubles as a hidden American-history lesson on Lewis and Clark
• Six puzzles plus drawing and mirror science keep one issue busy for hours

Weaknesses
• Puzzle solutions sit ten pages away from the puzzles themselves
• Comic speech bubbles use small print early readers may struggle with

Verdict: Recommended — Strong dog theme, real variety, and one unforgettable feature – slightly uneven across age levels.