BK Publishing

Beauty Without Cruelty

2012-02-24T03:35:00.001-08:00

Ben10 Fun Time!

2012-02-20T04:07:00.002-08:00

Exciting news, the Ben10 movie is almost here! Last week, Andy received a package which contained a Ben10 toy and a flash disc. Naturally we are children in spirit, so this was very exciting. The toy is a kind of watch that displays pictures onto the object you point it at when pressing a big fat round button on the side of the watch. Well anyway, Andy wrote a little review on the Ben10: Destroy All Aliens movie for you:

'Your favourite Cartoon Network hero Ben10 is starring in his very first CGI, animated television movie Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens, launching this March in South Africa.

Ten year old, alien-morphing Ben Tennyson struggles with the same stuff that every kid struggles with: school, bullies and getting grounded. Yet he gets a chance to escape the struggles of every day life by joining the Total Alien Immersion training programme on the far side of the galaxy. What Ben doesn't realise is that the programme has irreversible consequences. He crashes back to earth stuck in his alien form and has to battle Mechamorph Warrior, an all-new evil alien!

Ben10: Destroy All Aliens features the original voice actor from the television series and is just as action-packed as ever, if not more so. Highly entertaining with great visual effects, Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens is a must see!

Ben10: Destroy All Aliens will be aired on Cartoon Network at 09:00 on 17 March 2012, with a repeat aired on 23 March 2012 at 17:50.'

Here is the trailer:

If you'd like to see this action-packed movie before all of your friends (think of the bragging rights you'll have), you can stand a chance to win Green Tickets to the exclusive, once-off premier of Ben10: Destroy All Aliens in Johannesburg on 10 March 2012. All you have to do is visit: http://www.cartoonnetworkafrica.com/destroyallaliens between 20 February and 5 March 2012 to enter. Good luck!

Supernova Extras

2012-02-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! So we missed out on the January calendar for issue three, but because dates are fun (sometimes) I thought you'd like to see if there are any conversation worthy dates to remember.

And that's it for today's episode of: Supernova Extras!

Counting Our Toes

2012-02-10T02:47:00.001-08:00

What a wonderful thing the internet is! A massive library with all the information you could ever need. I can't even imagine what a disposition people must have been in before this wonderful invention came into our lives.
This week, we had none.
BK Publishing was at an absolute standstill. We tried to be productive by working on and improving strategies for marketing and sales, only to realise we need the interweb to make any excellent progress. Julia informed us after 3 days that she counted, and can confirm there are 5 toes on each of her feet. Good to know. The only interesting thing that happened. So now I will tell you a little about the anticipated birth of Supernova; the Mag for Curious Kids (I keep mentioning it because its just so darn beautiful!).

We were so excited when the first prints of Supernova came back to us last year. There was no champagne, but we had a little awful tasting sort of liquor with which to celebrate this awesome creation. On the 9th of September, when we officially launched, Britain reported a supernova which was visible from their side of the world. Surely that should have been a sign?

Its not easy getting an unknown product off the ground, we've put so much blood, sweat, fights and tears into this and there will probably put much more of it - but we do love this publication so! With hard work and a genuine love for what we do, our small shoe-string team will lift Supernova up to where it belongs - with the big boys!

Okay, too much cheese. I know, I know. Feels like we are the parents of a small child, okay? When you have kids, you will understand it (not that any of us do though). We're expecting issue 3 back today or Monday -excitement!

P.S: Email us for more info, if you want to subscribe (which you should!): mari@bkpublishing.co.za
P.P.S: Check out our new website! www.supernovamagazine.co.za

Making tea for a gnome.

2012-01-27T00:58:00.000-08:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again; working at a kids' magazine is just too much fun. This week lived up to the reputation too - filled with fun, experimenting and learning every single day.

Last weekend Julia, Andy and I hopped off for a nice weekend away. It's quite funny how eco-conscious we've become. So much so, that we invented a new car game: counting JoJo Tanks. Don't be fooled, this keeps you quite busy! On route from Nelspruit to Witrivier, we counted 226 JoJo Tanks. Excellent!

Julia and our gentle leader paid a visit to Sci-Enza at the University of Pretoria on Wednesday, who, by the by, now has a great new initiative to recycle your batteries. This does not mean that when you get tired they make you an espresso; we are literally talking about batteries. See, one AA battery can pollute around 500 L of water and one cubic meter of land for 50 years. Apparent how planet Earth will end up if we don't recycle batteries, right? So the Sci-Enza will take your old batteries and hand them in at Pick n Pay on your behalf. The batteries are then sent to Unicross who will then properly recycle them. Please, if you're going to take anything from today's post, take this: recycle your batteries properly, or just switch to rechargeable batteries (saves money too)!

Upon their return to the office, we all decided to try one of the experiments they had just heard about; boiling water with peanuts. No jokes, we tried it, and after many failed attempts, lit up a small packet of peanuts, had a flask of water hover over it and Voila! We boiled just enough water for a tiny cup of tea.

Yesterday was both a sad and happy day. We had a pizza-filled lunch to bid farewell to our two interns, Waldo and Corne. Sad as that was, we launched the brand new Supernova website! Visit it at: www.supernovamagazine.co.za. If you are one of the first 100 visitors, you will get a free PDF copy of the mag. Go there, go there now young padawan.

Interactive Friday

2012-01-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

Apologies gentle followers, my post is a little late, but hopefully it will lighten up your day a little. Perhaps a happy read on the worst day of the week is not such a bad idea...

In any case, last week was a fun one indeed. We heard that a nation-wide restaurant has started to make burgers with Braille written on them, by the use of sesame seeds. The team thought this was too legit to quit, so Julia and I immediately fetched take-aways for all of us. Sadly, we didn't get to experience the Braille-burger, but the average cheese burger did not disappoint either! One of the best lunches we have had in a long time. We chatted a bit about food in general and thought to post a nice dessert recipe for our loyal readers to try at home:

Potting Soil:

Ingredients:

250g Butter

250g Cream cheese

1 Cup sugar

3 Cups of milk

2 packets of vanilla instant pudding

2 -3 packs of Oreo cookies

Preparation:

Mix the butter, cream cheese and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
Next, you make the instant pudding (with the milk) and add that to the bowl.
Now the fun part! Crush all of the cookies; they should be fine, reminding you of ground.
Mix the cookies into the bowl and add some gummy worms for fun.
Serve in a glass vase, or a cake pan and dish up with a shovel.

It is simply fantastic, so be sure to give it a try!

Now for what you've been waiting for: Interactive Friday!
We arrived in the morning only to discover our gentle leader had made a rhino (with a head that lowers if you pull the tail) out of some old bookmarks nobody was using. Then he proceeded to set us a challenge: just before the end of the day, we all had to create an animal out of materials lying around the office, and here are the rules:
1. This had to be a 3D creation.
2. The internet was only to be used for photographic reference (so no origami templates).
3. We were only allowed to use objects found around the office.

4. This had to be a real animal that is either recently extinct or endangered.

5. We had to use at least two different materials.

And so we set to work. It was quite educational, learning about all of the endangered animals and feeling a bit sad that it was mostly man's fault that they are extinct. After about an hour we were all done and here's what we had come up with:

Andy made a Common Blue Morpho Butterfly which was able to flap its wings slightly if you moved it up and down...because it's on a stick.

Our gentle leader made Picachu, which naturally disqualified him. In this photo, is also the rhino he made the night before and a lion - his desperate attempt to stay in the competition.

Waldo (our current design intern) made a Panamanian Golden Frog.

I wanted to make a Blue Macaw, but lack of creative inspiration left me making the Loch Ness Monster. It still counts!

Julia made the Zhou Box Turtle. She added a string around its neck to illustrate to us that it was able to swim.

Nadia, our newcomer, made a Tasmanian Kangaroo. As you can very well see, she won the competition...

In issue four of Supernova, we are tackling another endangered animal: the Black Rhino, so be sure to order a copy as soon as possible!

We're back...

2012-01-06T03:59:00.000-08:00

How do you manage to get up in the morning to go to work after a wildly relaxing holiday? With great difficulty. That being said, we have managed for a week now and it gets easier. Not happier, but easier, just because of the fun environment in which we spend our 9 to 5 hours of the week. And our gentle leader got us a post-festive present: a new colleague! Nadia does some graphic design and she is also giving the Supernova website a face-lift. Fun fact about her? Too early to tell... but one may be sure that she will not disappoint!

This week has been quiet. We are mostly doing admin, drinking lots of coffee and trying to cope with the insane heat Pretoria's been hosting lately. So, for your entertainment, I shall proceed by telling you what we all did over the holidays. Julia and I were in Hermanus, our gentle leader stopped by Lesotho and Andy reclined at her place of residence.

To keep our spirits up we deliberately and in good spirit, engage in argumentative conversations. Yesterday we had a discussion on banned words in the office. Andy is banned from calling everyone 'dude', Benoit and Julia are both banned from using the word 'awesome' - this is what happens when you over use words, people don't like it. This morning Andy and Julia, who share a desk, decided to joust about who has more space. I suggested placing a line of tape down the middle of the table. Andy's response to that? Planking.

Next week will be the official start of 2012 for BK Publishing. We have some exciting projects planned. As always, watch this space.

I leave you with a picture of the Nova Rabbit, sculpted by me, out of paper-mache. A bid to get our Supernova readers to recycle wrapping paper in a different kind of way.

Hopping Around

2011-12-09T05:33:00.000-08:00

In the second posting, I mentioned some quirky facts about each one of us, and lately I realised that Julia has an especially strange one. She gets energy from lack of sleep. True story. A couple of weeks ago she rocked up at the office announcing that she hadn't slept a wink the previous night. I was scared on account of her abundance of energy, but our gentle leader predicted that she would crash at some point. This did not happen - quite the opposite, in fact.

Later that same day, we were brainstorming creative ways to recycle and somehow we got onto making airships from of old cereal boxes and what not. Our leader even built a wind-tunnel around our fan so our inventions could be tested. Not showing any signs whatsoever of burning out, Julia built a piece of re-enforced cardboard (as our leader described it), which earned her second place in both practicality and design. I submitted two entries, one getting first prize and one getting last prize, both for practicality. Our leader built a hot-air balloon type with a plastic bag, winning in appearance but lacking practicality. It just spun around in the wind-tunnel like clothes in a dryer. The result of this merrymaking? Issue 2 of Supernova presents a fantastic idea of how to recycle this festive season -not by building airships though.

Some time after this fun afternoon, Julia and Andy scooted over to a press event which launched the Dow Chemistry Lab at Sci-Bono. Here is what Andy had to say: 'Len Davids, the Deputy Director General of the Gauteng Department of Education; Sazi Lutseke, the Managing Director of Dow Southern Africa and Michael Peter, Chief Operations Officer of Sci-Bono Discovery Centre emphasised the importance of the laboratory for both school pupils and teachers alike. The aim of the laboratory is improve the quality of science in Gauteng with a learner education programme that allows hands-on experience. By acquiring skills through experiments, Davids sees the lab as a unique space that will “turn science in Gauteng around and contribute to scarce skills that are much needed”'. They had a blast.

Speaking of a blast, last week Julia and I went to the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Center. It's a really wonderful haven for these endangered animals. The most striking aspect was their option of adoption (there is a photo on the previous page). The gist of it is that you pay a sum to the center and then, depending on the package you bought, you metaphorically adopt a cheetah. They assign your donation to a specific creature, and you can then phone in to check up on your adoptive pet, or visit it. The center also hosts some other animals, like honey badgers and blue cranes, making it an even more impressive initiative! My favourite moment of the day was stroking the ambassador cheetah, Byron - words cannot describe what that felt like.

This, dear readers, is why its fun to work at a kids magazine!

And finally, Supernova issue 2 came out! It's great, featuring all sorts of articles; Scuba Diving, Cuisine Culture Shock, Saving Chimpanzees and Fifty Years of Fashion Fads. Email mari@bkpublishing.co.za if you'd like to buy a copy (R32) or subscribe for a year at only R185 - a great idea for a christmas gift!

Well now. Today we hope to do more airship building with some of the new interns; they are pretty creative, so the outcome will be interesting.

Watch this space!

Hopping Around

2011-12-09T02:04:00.000-08:00

So, busy times yet again! Before I let you dive into the crazy life we lead at BK Publishing, here is a taster -some footies that show you what we've been up to...

Julia and Andrea attended the Launch of Dow Chemistry Lab at Sci-Bono...

And Julia and I hanged out at the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Center...

Photo's from Reach for a Dream

2011-11-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a while...

2011-11-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

Wowee. What a hectic couple of weeks we've had! Just as one problem is fixed, out pop another one to bite your shin. Supernova is finally at the printers, after much trouble - which I will not trouble you with. None the less, it looks fantastic. If I was a kid, this would be number one!

A while ago our crazy editor Andrea Vermaak and photographer Laura Donaldson joined Reach for a Dream volunteers Christel Kotze and Annerie Bosman on an origami outing to Springvale Primary School in Centurion. Cheryl Gibbs, a teacher at the school, coordinated the event. She showed the children from Reach for Dream how to fold their own different origami forms, such as tumblers, a boat and a fox that could be used as a finger puppet. Each child also was given a booklet that includes other origami forms for them to try and fold. Andy and Laura even participated -though they refused to present their designs to us... Reach for a Dream is close to all our hearts here at BK Publishing and we encourage all to get involved in any capacity that you can in helping to inspire hope, and enable children with life threatening diseases to have some fun!

Today however, we decided to have five minutes of fun. It's recommended. The ladies in the office bought some lunch (and we found out that Andy likes to dip fries in ice cream... that tends to happen when you've lost your marbles) and then we felt inspired to play a trick on our gentle leader upon his return to the office. Needless to say, we were ready; Andy was in position, and Julia and I managed to stop sniggering. But, while buzzing open the gate, I hit my foot and yelped out in pain which awakened laughter in Andy and our leader missed the trick completely. An epic fail. Julia was the only one who remained composed.

Meet the Team!

2011-11-03T04:14:00.000-07:00

Well today is tediously boring - for the purpose of reporting at least. We are all here in the office doing admin, posting prizes to kids who won competitions in the first issue of Supernova and working a million-and-one miscellaneous other tasks that need to get done. What can I say, life here is pretty exciting, but you do get these magically average days. So, to keep our readers up-to-date, here is a brief introduction to the team, and a random fun-fact about each of us:

At the top of our hierarchy resides Benoit, he is the Publisher, CEO, head designer and our gentle leader. I have never seen him sit on a chair like a normal person.
Next we have Andrea, the Editor of Supernova, contributor of some articles and all-round smiley kiddie in the office. Andy is VERY clued up on Scotland.
Then there's Julia, who does the Marketing and Advertising Sales. She the voice of reason in our lives, and she buys us lollipops! Win!
Finally, there's me. Mari. I am a Publishing Intern / Sales Representative...and your narrator.

I just finished our Christmas catalogue, which I will post for you guys to look at. Take note of two things:
1. Give yourself an early Christmas present, and buy one of our fantastic publications.
2. I drew the elves myself.

Julia just finished putting together some tips on water conservation for JoJo Tanks, it's shocking how much there is that we can all do to contribute. We should all do more to conserve water, and recycle for that matter. The boss-man is big on recycling, so we all try to keep up with his ways.

Well that's my bit for the day. Tomorrow, we construct the Nova-Rabbit!

What we're all About

2011-11-01T05:31:00.000-07:00

So back in 2006, BK Publishing was born. Publisher Benoit Knox started the company in his second year of studying Publishing at The University of Pretoria. He started out with a magazine; A Look Away. It was a quarterly magazine which showcased South African Arts and Culture and ran for about five years. That wasn't the only thing that BK Publishing had going though...

In 2009, Metz and Bop and the Big Library Theft was published. The book is made to inspire kids of all ages to take up reading through a series of short stories which all contribute to a larger story, depicted in comic-book format. Too much fun, right? Right. BK Publishing went on to turn this into a social entrepreneurship project, getting people to sponsor books and then taking them to underprivileged kids.

Then in 2011, Shaggy was published. This book consists of fourteen short stories written by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay. Politically incorrect, dry and sarcastic, this book caters to a very specific niche market. Trivial to important people, important to trivial people, Oscar Wilde would have loved it I think.

But that's not all. I have saved the best for last! In September this year BK Publishing launched a brand new, game changing kids magazine: Supernova. Fully hand illustrated, Supernova is a magazine for curious kids from ages 9 to 14. Educators find it quite helpful in the classroom too. Check out the website if you don't believe me: www.supernovamagazine.co.za

Well, that's it for now. In this industry we never sleep, and there is always something to report, so watch this space...