Honest History is a magazine, that’s really more of a book. If you want to get your kids excited about history, this can be an excellent addition to other great history books or unit studies.

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you click on it and make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission at no cost to you. For more information, please check our Privacy Policy and Disclaimers and Disclosures.

I found out about Honest History a few years ago and heard great things about it. However, the price point was out of our budget. When I saw an ad on Facebook that you could get a free copy of one edition as a trial, and only pay less than $4 for shipping, I jumped on it.

(If you order using code GYPSYGAMESCHOOLER, you’ll get 10% off!)

The edition we received was An Age of Legends (issue 17). Inside were 13 different articles about ancient Greece, a quiz, word find, and a maze. I especially enjoyed the article interviewing an archaeologist.

I’ll come right out and say it–this is an expensive magazine. However, each edition is very well-made, so I can see why. The pages are thick and durable, and it really feels more like a book. It’s just a book that a new edition will show up every three months.

The magazine was chock-full of illustrations, short blurbs, interesting activities, and exciting information. It is definitely a really high-quality publication and feels great in the hand.

They offer a couple of different subscription plans. The most expensive is to purchase a specific issue ($17.95 at the time of writing this article). The cheapest way is actually a tie–either purchase a bundle of 6 issues at once ($75 today) or sign up for the one issue every three months subscription ($50/year today). Interestingly, their subscription allowing you to get three issues every three months is more expensive ($40/3 months). However, done this way, you do have the option to choose which three issues you’re sent.

In addition, they offer digital-only subscriptions (just $7/issue) on their app, and I was able to look at issue 13, The Golden Rule. This issue is all about Africa, which is an entirely huge subject to try to cover in one magazine issue, but I’m so glad they did it. Africa is chronically under-represented in America’s education, so when a resource includes a specific section that’s not Egypt, I’m thrilled.

The Golden Rule includes 15 articles, a coloring page, quiz, word find, and maze. I love how it dove into the many languages and clothing styles of this huge continent. There’s even a comic! I’m excited for my kids to explore this issue when we do a unit on The Lion King. (I will be pointing out to my kids the pitfalls of this very unit study–we Americans tend to lump all of Africa together, just like we tend to lump all of Native Americans together. However, by learning some about the different languages and cultures represented in both the movie and this magazine issue, I hope to help my kids realize that Africa is a huge, widely diverse area. I do love how The Golden Rule keeps reinforcing the wide variety found in Africa.)

While the Table of Contents was clickable and will (usually) take you where you want to go, once you’re on an article page, your only choices are forward or back. I found this awkward and less-than-ideal for quickly reviewing it, but excellent for in-depth reading.

HonestHistory.Co also offers books, apparel, gifts, and a podcast! The podcast is free to listen to, and it covers lots of historical stories. I can’t wait to introduce my kids to it.

In the end, the print version of this magazine subscription is outside my family’s budget. Plus, we’re not reliably in one place to make any print subscription worth it. However, if you’re stationary and can afford the Honest History magazine, I definitely recommend it! And now that I know they also offer a digital magazine, I think I will be looking into it for us.