Today,
Scholastic Publishing may be best known for bringing the stories of
Harry Potter into our homes. Even though the J. K. Rowling series had
been successful in the UK, there was certainly no guarantee that a
book of witches and warlocks attending an English boarding school
would capture the imagination of young American readers.
But
to those of us who attended elementary schools in America as the
first wave of baby-boomers to disrupt the social order, Scholastic
wasn't a major player in the best sellers industry.
Scholastic
found titles that would appeal to kids and created a number of ways
to make them available to us.
Most
memorable for me was the flimsy 8 page newsprint catalog our teacher
passed out every three or four weeks. At roughly ten titles per
advertised page, and not counting the order form page, that meant we
could review some sixty to seventy new books to select the ones that
promised the most adventures, the most laughs, the most information,
or the sagas of how other kids our age dealt with bad situations in
their lives, like not making the baseball team or sobbing as the cute
boy next door waved good-bye when his family moved away. This was
strong stuff!
In
1920, Maurice”Robbie” Robinson distributed his first sell sheets
for kid's books. It was called the Western Pennsylvania Scholastic.
Just six years later Robinson offered the first book published by his
company, Saplings,
a collection of stories written by young people.
If
ever someone was born for their career, it was Robbie. He worked
tirelessly with school teachers, principals and librarians to
distribute his catalogs, believing that the books he sold were
wanted, perhaps needed, by children across the country, especially in
cities where they were available nowhere else. He was a one man show,
selecting the books, writing then printing their descriptions in the
catalog, distributing his catalogs, fulfilling the orders and then
doing it all over again. He is quoted as saying, “I cannot recall a
day where I did not look forward to tackling the work that was
waiting for me in my office,” and I'm pretty sure he was serious.
Once
the Scholastic name was well known and trusted he began to hold Book
Fairs at schools, libraries, churches and firehalls, another
effective way to sell books to children.
In
my elementary school, the teachers passed out the sell sheets, and we
returned the order forms with our money a few days later to the
teacher. When the books arrived there was not only the fun of
flipping through your new books, but the event of passing out the
books effectively burned a boring hour of classroom time.
I
may have been a slightly dorky kid because I loved books about how
things worked and random facts. What's the deepest part of the ocean,
the coldest spot on the earth, how do they breath in a submarine?
And
growing up near Detroit I had an early fascination with cars and the
automobile industry. I ordered a copy of Don Stanford's The Red
Car from Scholastic and it was a glorious book. I still remember
it. The car was a red MG, not even made in Detroit. The story is
about Hap Adams, a 16 year old boy who finds a way to own his dream
car, repairs it and then learns to race it. What could possibly be
cooler to a 12 year old boy?
I
recently thought it would be fun to find an old copy of The Red
Car on the internet so I checked BookFinder.com. The cheapest
copy was $54.00 for the 1954 Scholastic edition. I really believe it
was a great book...for 35 ¢.
But
Amazon
has reader's comments about the book and I am apparently not the
only person who bought the book from Scholastic, not the only one who
recalls details of the story 50 years later, and not the only one who
can mark its influence on his life.
Books
do that to people.
I'm
betting a lot of you remember a book or two from Scholastic that had
a story you remember.
Our
local PBS station is trumpeting the creation of regional
book fair coverage in America. These fairs are generally a lot of
fun to attend...and it's very heartening to witness how intensely and
emotionally the visitors value books and reading.
printed short stories in one, three, and five minute
lengths. The content is supplied by an app called Short Edition with
140,000 users who share their writing.
Ebook
Sales Slow for Publishers
Major publishers
have seen ebook sales decline to the point that some
have discontinued reporting their sales figures in their financial
statements, including their sales either under the broader
heading of Digital Revenue, which includes audio books among other
things, or Trade.
Reversing
eBook Sales Declines
Pointing
out that only Amazon has seen increases in ebook sales, the
author calls for more innovation...be like Amazon. Good luck!
Serial
Killer's Novel Yanked by Amazon
An
ebook entitled A
MAD World Order
by Paul Bernardo, jailed for the the
murders of two Ontario teenagers in the early 1990s, has
been withdrawn for sale on the Amazon web-site
PBS' Book View
Now
Our
local PBS station is trumpeting the creation of regional
book fair coverage in America. These fairs are generally a lot of
fun to attend...and it's very heartening to witness how intensely and
emotionally the visitors value books and reading.
Why Is Ed Tech
Growing So Fast?
Ed
Tech remains a controversial, even dubious adjunct to actual
teaching. Acknowledging
that, the market continues to expand, perhaps because there seems
to be an assumption that digital everything is better than analog
anything. Leading Ed Tech company McMillan
Education is partnering with Blinklearning
to pursue promising technologies.
Rediscovering
Letterpress
A
Brooklyn designer discovers
letterpress printing, appreciates the feel of the printed piece,
hikes to North Carolina, opens her print shop and becomes one of the
Ladies of Letterpress.
Book Nerd
Problems
Amazon Goes Brick
& Mortar
After
rewriting the rules for book retailing Amazon
has opened a bookstore in Seattle to discover exactly what they
killed decades ago.
Binge Reading
Most
of us know people who will use a service like Netflix to watch
episode after episode of the same television show. Apparently
something
similar can occur with books.
Buy a Read, Get a
Ride
In
a country where people read just two books per year, L&PM
Editores, Brazil's largest trade paper publisher, bound RFID
chips in certain titles (The
Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes,
etc.). The
chips can be used for ten subway trips and can be recharged. Even
cooler, the covers are designed to look like subway maps.
Carmen Sandiego
Is Back
HMH
has released an app for iOs and Android that revives
the story and play of the Carmen Sandiego brand, originally
released 30 years ago for PCs.
International
Publisher Scores Domestically
Open
Letter Books, a publisher of international literature, discovered
a title at Frankfurt that put them on the map locally.
Free Short
Stories
Grenoble,
France, has installed eight kiosks in their downtown area that
dispense
free
Final Thought
“The failure to
read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most
fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
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