Ten-year-old Brooke Peet holds up the August/September issue of “Discovery Girls” magazine where she is featured along with 12 other girls from around Nevada, at The Vistas Park.
Friday, Sept. 5, 2008 | 3:51 p.m.
For 11-year-old Brooke Peet of Summerlin, an appearance in a national children’s magazine was an instant boost in popularity — just in time for the new school year.
“My friends think it’s awesome,” she said. “They’ve never had a friend who’s been in a magazine before.”
Brooke, a sixth grader at Sig Rogich Middle School, is in the August/September issue of Discovery Girls Magazine, a bi-monthly publication that caters to girls age 8 to 12. She’s also featured on the Web site Discoverygirls.com.
Her age in the magazine is listed as 10, but Brooke has since turned 11.
The majority of the magazine’s content is reader-submitted, with more than 900,000 subscriptions nationwide in addition to sales at Target, Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble.
This edition focused on readers from Nevada, and after thousands of girls sent in questionnaires and photos hoping to be featured, Brooke was one of only 12 selected — and the only one from Summerlin.
It was also the magazine’s annual Back to School issue, which added to the excitement. As part of the selection process, Brooke mailed in several photos and completed a lengthy questionnaire, with her answers deemed as some of the best by the Discovery Girls staff.
The questions dealt with a wide variety of topics ranging from how she would feel if a woman became president to what to do if a parent “treats you like a 5-year-old” and other middle school dilemmas.
Other topics covered by the Back to School edition included how to handle friendship drama, mean teachers and popularity issues.
“I like how people can send in their own issues and get advice,” Brooke said. “It’s a lot of good advice that I can and have used before.”
After being selected at the end of January, Brooke joined the 11 other girls for a photo shoot at Mandalay Bay that involved only one thing — several hours of pampering.
“It was a sleepover theme in a hotel room and we all wore our pajamas,” Brooke said. “We had pizza and a bunch of ice cream. They took a zillion pictures.”
In the magazine, Brooke describes her favorite hobbies as cheerleading for Rogich Middle School and reading in her spare time.
“I really like cheering,” she said. “It gives me a chance to make friends and I want to keep active.”
Scrapbooking is also one of her pastimes.
Brooke’s mother, Julie Peet, described her daughter as very outgoing — although she wasn’t always that way. They moved to The Vistas from El Paso, Texas, in 2006.
“She was shy when we first moved here, and rightfully so,” Julie Peet said. “Las Vegas can be an intimidating town. But lately she has really blossomed at school and become very active.”
Brooke wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, but her three hamsters — Templeton, Bibbles and Poopsy — keep her plenty busy for now. A fourth hamster listed in Brooke’s magazine profile has since died.
“Templeton looks like the rat from Charlotte’s Web, Bibbles was just a cool name and Poopsy is self-explanatory,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t go any further with that one.”
Jeff O’Brien can be reached at 990-8957 or [email protected].
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