Cricket Media, Wonder and Company Partner for WONDERFUL OBJECTS, a Make-Your-Own-Story Adventure and Subscription Box

Cricket remixes storytelling with first-ever story-making box and interactive, year-long project for children

WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ - Cricket Media Group Ltd. and Wonder and Company today announced a partnership to launch WONDERFUL OBJECTS, an interactive storytelling adventure and subscription box program for children ages 7-14. WONDERFUL OBJECTS brings immersive storytelling right to children's homes, delivering a unique, quarterly subscription box filled with mysterious objects and ephemera and a hidden, interactive story ("KYNGDOM") that unfolds through the boxes, in Cricket magazines, and on a portal on GrowingUpCricket, Cricket's new digital destination for readers and their families.

For more than 40 years, Cricket has provided a rich experience of unparalleled storytelling, art and ideas through its award-winning magazines. Now, with WONDERFUL OBJECTS and the fantastical, immersive world of KYNGDOM, Cricket remakes storytelling for the modern age with a narrative that unfolds over the course of a year, and is shaped by participants across multiple platforms. Participants can visit https://wonderfulobjects.co/kidsbox to subscribe to the boxes and sign up for the story, which commences in January 2016.

The story starts with a mysterious job offer from The Royal Zoo, a secret animal kingdom in a parallel world. The Brazen Inquiry Guild, a zoological research organization, has just acquired a strange and possibly magical object high in the mountains. There is evidence that the object was made by unusually intelligent animals. The Guild needs help identifying the object—and its power. The reader has been chosen because s/he recently invented a device that lets humans understand animal communication— despite no one on the team being older than 15!

In the corner of the job offer letter, however, something has scrawled "Don't take the job!" and signed it with a paw print. Who, or what, left that message? Who can be trusted? Did the letter reach the right person?

The key story pieces will be found in the magazines and quarterly subscription boxes, with supplemental touchpoints dropped via various other channels:

• Snail mail to subscribers
• KYNGDOM page on GrowingUpCricket
• Kid-safe chatrooms like Chatterbox
• Social platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Vine, and Snapchat

Katya Andresen, CEO of Cricket Media, said, "Cricket readers—yesterday, today and tomorrow—grow up storytellers and storymakers. Cricket magazines and experiences are built to actively engage children's imaginations, intellects, and curiosity, and WONDERFUL OBJECTS represents what we believe is the next level of storytelling that invites children of all ages to engage directly and substantively with the world of the story and to make it their own. It invites children to not just consume stories, but to make stories, and to fully dig into the depth and breadth of creative experience that story-making offers."

Cricket Media believes that every child should have the chance to grow up with quality storytelling, and is partnering with First Book for a Buy One/Donate One subscription campaign through January 31, 2016. First Book is a nonprofit organization that provides new products for children in need of reading resources. Visit http://shop.cricketmedia.com/first-book for more information.

Established in 1973, Cricket Media has been a leader in quality content for children aged 0-14+. Today, it has nearly a million subscribers across its print and digital products, and continues to engage readers with its entertaining and educational content. Cricket has won 60 Parent's Choice Awards since 2012.

ABOUT CRICKET MEDIA
Cricket Media is an education media company that provides award-winning content on a safe and secure learning network for children, families and teachers across the world. Cricket Media's 11 popular media brands for toddlers to teens include Babybug, Ladybug, Cricket® and Cobblestone®. The Company's innovative web-based K12 tools for school and home include the ePals community and virtual classroom for global collaboration as well as In2Books®, a Common Core eMentoring program that builds reading, writing and critical thinking skills. Cricket Media serves approximately one million classrooms and millions of teachers, students and parents in over 200 countries and territories through its platform and NeuPals, its joint venture with China's leading IT services company Neusoft. Cricket Media also licenses its content and platform to top publishing and educational companies worldwide. For more information, please visit www.cricketmedia.com.

ABOUT WONDER AND COMPANY
Wonder and Company: Merchants of Adventure and Whimsy is a family lifestyle, entertainment, travel, and imagination destination for the explorers out there. For the dreamers and builders and those looking to embrace the adventure and whimsy that is everywhere around them. For more information, visit Wonder and Company and follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. #WonderfulObjects

SOURCE Cricket Media Inc.