Scholastic Book Services

About Scholastic Book Services

Scholastic Book Services was a name used on paperbacks issued by the American children's publisher Scholastic, including small-format reprints of books first published by other houses, such as Random House's Three Investigators mysteries.

Scholastic itself was founded on 22 October 1920 by Maurice R. Robinson in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, as a publisher of magazines for young people, and it is now based in New York. It entered the book club business in 1948, when it joined Pocket Books to launch the Teen Age Book Club (T.A.B.) for readers aged 13 to 18, with pupils ordering through tear-out forms in its classroom magazines. In 1957 the editor Lilian Moore suggested selling low-cost paperbacks by post, and she became the first editor of the Arrow and Lucky book clubs. Norman Bridwell's Clifford the Big Red Dog appeared in 1963.

Scholastic Book Services editions of the Three Investigators series show the imprint in use from September 1971 to January 1984, first in a larger paperback format and then in a small pocket size; the original trade editions of that series were Random House hardbacks. Scholastic added school book fairs in 1981 and published the American edition of Harry Potter in 1998.

Because a book with this imprint may be a paperback of a text first issued elsewhere, collectors should check for an earlier hardback before treating it as a first.