My daughter is reading them right now, and the cover for Celery also says: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of artichokes?” We love Bunnicula!
Such happy memories! I was a reader as a kid – usually going through a book a day – but my family wasn’t book ‘owning’ for the most part. I don’t remember ever setting foot in a book store until I was in high school. I got my books from the library. At home, I had a World Book encyclopedia, a Childcraft set, some of those mail order books with two novels in one (Robnson Crusoe & Swiss Family Robinson; Wizard of Oz & Alice in Wonderland; and so on); very occasionally one of those cheap Whitman hardcover books from the grocery or drug store… and the Scholastic books.
In my day (I started kindergarten in 1965), the Scholastic catalogs didn’t come out monthly, though. They came out once a year, I think, maybe twice. I was always allowed to buy 2 books and the decision was huge. I’d pore over the catalog, reading every description carefully, and make my choice. Sometimes I’d beg Mom for a third book and she’d let me have it. Then trotting to school with the order form and a check. Then the wait! Worse than Christmas! Finally, the happy day – my books arrived!
I read all my Scholastic books (well, all my books period – including the encyclopedia) over & over & over. There was one I loved I’ve never seen again. It was titled Gillan or Gillian and was about a little girl in a foreign country (Germany, maybe, or a Scandanavian country). It was translated from another language, IIRC. The little girl’s mother (a widow or divorcee) had started dating again, a man the girl didn’t like. The girl stole a pink glass elephant to give her mother as a gift… I’d love to read that book again.
Jess, if you can’t find it here, http://www.loganberrybooks.com/default.html, you can’t find it. They’ll charge you $2 for a search, but every mind in the children’s book world will be working on it for you and likely will tell you not only the name and author, but year of publication, publisher’s name and where to get a copy. That is, if they don’t already have one in stock. NEO Dopers, field trip.
ETA: And I can’t figure out how to do links now.
I tried to get Scholastic books all the time, and actually managed to talk my Mom into buying me one about twice a year.
My “problem” was that we lived in New York City, and had a large library 2 blocks from my house. My Mom was a pretty soft touch for most things, but she rarely saw the point of paying good money for a book I get get for free at a library just a 90 second walk away.
I remember the joy of ordering and receiving the books, in the 60’s! I was an avid reader, and still am.
I looked at the prices of some of those books from Walloon’s link- $10??? Seems like way too much to me.
If you were an Encyclopedia Brown fan, you might like this: Brown Harvest
When we could afford it I sure was thrilled to order books. Alas, it was rare we could afford it.
I’ve checked that site for the book, but it never occurred to me to post a request on my own! Duh! Anyway I just did – maybe I’ll get something back. Thanks for the reminder, SigmaGirl.
Cool beans! Let us know the results. The store is awesome. Make it a must on your next trip to Cleveland.
I LOVE Adopted Jane!!! I got it through Scholastic, but we moved at least a million times when I was a kid and it got discarded or lost somewhere along the way. I came across a copy in a library in Anaheim or Fullerton or something, and was sorely tempted to steal it. My virtue was rewarded; I found a copy at a Goodwill for only 25 cents–far less than the library fees would have been.
I got Dynamite whenever I could, and I got as many books as my parents were willing to pay for. And I had the kitten poster, as did my sister 8 years later. Scholastic was the best!
Count me in as another heavy purchaser of Scholastic books in NZ during the late 70s - I was a voracious reader and was allowed to order from the Arrow book club selection well before my peers.
So what do I remember:
Encyclopedia Brown
Danny Dunn
Homer Price
The Mad Scientists Club
Charlottes Web
Plenty of SciFi anthologies, inc several A C Clarke and Asimov.
The Missing Persons League
Z for Zachariah
…
All of them are gone, now. It’s a shame - I’d love to pass many of those books on.
I did get to order a few books off the Teachers list, too, when I was 10-11. A particularly good book on the Nuclear Power industry came in that category, full of the details of nuclear accidents and reactor designs. Lots of fun for a kid my age.
Si
The only one that I can call to memory is: The Adventures of Homer Fink.
He was a big old geek (like me) who couldn’t do a push up or tie his shoelaces. (I could tie mine.)
Also, screw Loganberry and their two-dollar money orders. Try these sites:
http://forums.abebooks.com/n/mb/listsf.asp?webtag=abesleuthcom&ctx=0
I loved my Scholastic paperbacks, too. I had hundreds of them. I really wanted to pass them on to my kids, but my stepfather threw them all out during when he and my mother got divorced.
I haven’t spoken to him since then, and his throwing the books out the main reason why. No, I’m not kidding. Every time I think about him throwing all of those boxes of my books out, I get insanely angry. :mad:
I used to agonize over how to spend the $1 I was allotted for Scholastic each year. If I played it right, that would buy 3 books.
Don’t forget, the younger kids got “Wow,” next in line was “Dynamite,” then came “Bananas.”
Oh, wow, yes. Scholastic Book Club. Tab and Arrow books. Those little flyers. I was lucky because my parents were big into encouraging me to read, so I could pretty much get whatever I wanted from the flyer. When the box came in, I went home with a lovely little stack of books to read–and I still have most of them, all these years later! Just some I can remember off the top of my head:
Old Bones, the Wonder Horse (yes, I still have my copy, but I’m afraid I’m not letting it go!)
Mrs. Coverlet’s Magicians
The Secret Tree-House
The Secret in the Pirate Oak
The Man in the Long Black Cape
The Secret Horse (I was big into horses, and secrets)
Amy Moves In
Amy and Laura
King of the Dollhouse
On Your Toes, Susie! (I was not a girly girl and hated the idea of ballet, but for some reason I really liked this book)
Trina
Katie Kittenheart
Kid Sister
Two-Minute Mysteries (by the same guy who wrote the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries)
So many of them! I’ve often wished I could find a place that sold a lot of these old Scholastic books used, because I would pick up an enormous pile of them to read to just wallow in my childhood good memories.
Thanks a lot for a great nostalgia thread!
Brings me right back. Weren’t the Sweet Pickles books part of this? And Amelia Bedelia? Yeah, our school was really into the book order.
It’s funny, because after the Scholastic Book Club, I never really got the same thrill waiting for books I’d ordered again until a few years ago when I started getting shit from Amazon. The first time I came home to find the box waiting for me, I flashed right back to 2nd grade (I’m almost 40, btw).
Thanks for the reminder. 
OMG! Sweet Pickles! I have buried memories that I never even knew I had…
Come to think of it, it’s been about 30 years since I read Sweet Pickles, but your post jogged my memory enough to actually clear up what I now remember as a Very Serious Mystery for me at the time…finding out what the hell a Xerus is.
My mom had a rule: she’d buy me any Scholastic book I wanted, but it had to be at least 180 pages long. The shorter books, she said, weren’t worth it because I tore through them far too fast.