Back in March, I wrote about an odd sketch that I had found tucked away inside a 1968 paperback edition of Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All from Scholastic Book Services.
The vintage Scholastic book set off a bit of nostalgia for me. These were some of the books that I grew up with. We'd get the Scholastic Book Club brochure and order form once a month in our language arts classroom and then anxiously await the arrival of our books, and sometimes the new issue of Dynamite, a few weeks later. It was Amazon before Amazon. And long before drone delivery.
Anyway ... while I was working on that post in March, I tweeted about my fondness/weakness for old Scholastic books.
I'm teetering on the edge of falling down the rabbit hole of obsession with 1970s @Scholastic books. Do NOT need another thing to collect.
— Chris Otto (@Papergreat) March 19, 2014Scholastic's Twitter account promptly encouraged my descent into obsession.
@Papergreat We'd LOVE to see a photo of your collection if you're willing to share!
— Scholastic (@Scholastic) March 19, 2014So, over the course of the spring and summer, I acquired Scholastic books here and there, on the cheap, at bookstores and used-book sales. They're not that hard to come across, but I did get the sense that the pre-1980 volumes are becoming a bit more scarce.
As you can see in the photo at the top of this post (featuring guest star Mitts), I have built a respectable collection of nearly 40 Scholastic books.
(I'm far from the only one with this interest. There is, for example, this fabulous collection on Flickr.)
To celebrate and share my fledgling pile, I'm going to count down my Top 25 favorite covers starting on October 1. I'll put up a new cover at 1 p.m. (EDT) each day. Also, at some point, I'm going to write about the most garish and hilarious Scholastic covers I came across in my scouting. Because they can't all be winners.
So come back to Papergreat every afternoon in October, and share your memories of the Scholastic Book Club and all of your favorite childhood books.
P.S. — And no, I'm not doing this series to fill the dark void left by the Philadelphia Phillies missing the playoffs for the third straight October. ... OK, maybe I am.
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