Remembering Scholastic Books

Reading this news article last week on Scholastic Book Clubs being criticized for using their schoolroom "in" to sell non-educational materials made me wistful for the days when I brought home the Scholastic flyer, chock full of reading opportunities at reasonable prices.

Scholastic has always hawked popular mass-media. After all, what better way to "trick" kids into reading than to give them subjects, like entertainment, they find interesting? They sold paperback media tie-ins, as evidenced by the Partridge Family book from my own collection, above. They also offered novelizations of current movies. I remember getting Blackbeard's Ghost, from the Disney movie. I have a vivid memory of using a passage from that book in English class as an example of a perfect metaphor. In describing the pirate of the book's title, it said something like: He was an angry, grimy Zeus, hurtling verbal thunderbolts at his crew.

(Partridge Family Aside: What can I say? I convinced myself I was in love with Laurie Partridge, as portrayed by Susan Dey, when I was an impressionable youth.)

In the 80's, Scholastic made the leap to investing directly in television with one of my favorite shows: Voyagers! The program was action/adventure, starring a time-traveling young boy, and thus offered up a side-helping of history. Sadly, the NBC series didn't win the ratings it deserved and was canceled after only one season. The Scholastic novelization of the pilot episode (below) is one of the few tangible markers of its existence.


But back then, Scholastic was all about reading. Even their colorful, picture-laden media magazine Dynamite! was a reading opportunity. There were dozens of chances to own popular children's fiction books, like The Marshmallow Ghosts and Timothy and the Snakes, which managed to survive my turbulent youth. (The latter introduced me to the Spanish equivalent of my name, Timoteo, and sparked my interest in that exotic language.) I remember begging my grandmother to buy me a kid's cookbook I found in one Scholastic Bookclub flyer. Somewhere, I still have the copy of Hercules and Other Tales from Greek Myths by Olivia E Coolidge. My lifelong love of mythology got started for a measly 60 cents.

Owning Scholastic books stimulated my nascent intellect. For me, a poor kid growing up in a low-income housing project, these were cherished treasures.

Of course, I haven't seen a Scholastic Bookclub flyer in decades. If the allegations are true that Scholastic defended their sale of toys, stickers and makeup by saying that they are reading-related because they come with instructions, I am sorely disappointed.

But that doesn't change my love of the books I enjoyed as a child one iota. Give Scholastic a chance, sez I. Let them return to their core value: providing kids with affordable opportunities to expand their minds.