Magazine covers can be a fun challenge. There's one of the PSG challenges from last year that is just that. Here are my thoughts:
I agree with C-Man about the text in both of these. It's hard to read in the 2nd and oddly placed in the 1st. In fact the headers in the first are way too tight, both to the top and each other. Why you have randomly staggered the contents titles, I'm not sure. OK, I can see they follow an off-center crescent curve. But they don't line up, aren't well-spaced, and the crescent isn't clear. At first glance the words just look random.
The foreground figure and the background are nice in the first example, but the 3 heads make no sense, have no depth, and aren't lit or leveled the same. The one on the bottom is a distracting focal point. So, I think if you got rid of those and realigned your text, and simplified the font for the contents portion, you'd have a pretty good design.
The second one is just too busy. Needs some drastic cuts. Even little details like the small section of flowery grey background. That should be flat color. The kids could be smaller unless they are part of the illustration with the angel. Hmmm. If the kids and the angel are separate, I would suggest giving the angel much more emphasis. And as C-Man said the text needs rearranging and a change of font and color for the contents.
Well, I hope I haven't hurt your feelings. That was not my intention. I like to teach and it seems that a little constructive critique was called for in this case. Keep up the good work Mattattack!