"Cinderella Story"

Shaer, M.  (February 2015).  Cinderella Story.  Smithsonian, 45(10), p. 32-41, 82.

Before I had read “Cinderella Story” I knew that tigers were endangered.  What I did not know, however, was how tigers were being helped to not becoming endangered any longer and who was helping tigers on their path to recovery.

I recently got my answers while conveniently reading “Cinderella Story” from the library’s issue of the Smithsonian.  Matthew Shaer’s “Cinderella Story” is about an orphaned Amur tiger cub that was rescued by a pair of hunters and then rehabilitated upon being released into the wild.      

Zolushka’s story started on a February afternoon in 2012.  Zolushka, Russian for Cinderella, was taken to a wildlife inspector where she was properly fed.  After receiving proper care, she was then relocated to a rehabilitation center for tigers and rare animals where she was introduced to surroundings familiar of that to the wild. There, she was given food that she had to hunt herself, to prepare her for the wild.  After about a year, Zolushka was released back into the wild with her new hunting skills.   

Having read the article, I was curious to see what advertisements surrounded the piece.  I found a traveling ad and an ad advertising a new television series on PBS, called “Earth a New Wild”, surrounding “Cinderella Story.”  As a whole, I found out that the magazine contained 26 total pages of ads out of 96 pages, which means 27 percent of the magazine is comprised of ads.  Some of the ads do relate to this piece and the magazine, such as the traveling ads and the new television series.  The reason why these particular advertisements are relatable to this magazine is because Smithsonian is an educational magazine and so are these two ads.     

One other thing I found interesting while reading the article was that “Cinderella Story” is cut off at page 41 and resumes at page 82.  One question entered my mind when this occurred – why is the article not continued on to the next page?  One possible answer came to mind as well – maybe to keep the reader engaged not only in the one article, but to keep the reader engaged with the magazine as a whole.  And while I was looking for page 82, I found that four other articles stood in my way.  I figured that as the reader is reading, he or she will stumble upon an ad, or another story, and is forced to look at it for at least a few seconds, and perhaps if the reader finds either that ad or story interesting then a few seconds may last for a few minutes.  As a result then, that ad will then have served its purpose of being encoded by its audience.