Scholastic Inc., a children’s book publisher, is in trouble for selling more then just books in its classroom book clubs.

Everyone remembers getting those handouts in school from Scholastic Book Clubs (or Arrow for you older kids) where you could buy all those Goosebumps books. Well, now Scholastic is in trouble for selling stickers, toys, and – yep you guessed it – video games in addition to books.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), an advocacy group based in Boston told the The New York Times that they reviewed the fliers to find that 14% of the items were not books and 19% of the books came with additional items including stickers, board games, or trinkets.

Susan Linn, director of the campaign said that the main complaint is from parents who think…

There seems to be a recent trend in turning books into movies or video games. In an attempt to turn at least part of the trend back on itself, one writer is working books into games.

According to an article in the New York Times, author PJ Haarsma was writing a sci-fi story marketed toward preteens that he wanted to present in a new way. So he coupled it with an online game. The book series and game is The Softwire’s Rings of Orbis. The first book is out and the online game is already up and running at The Softwire’s Rings of Orbis. The online PC game will be…

Scholastic Media, a division of Scholastic Corporation and a leading producer of quality, family-oriented media including feature films, home video, TV and interactive products, has announced a distribution agreement with Activision Publishing.

Scholastic Media has developed two children’s games for the Nintendo DS platform, I Spy: Fun House and Animal Genius, both with a suggested retail price of $29.99. I Spy is currently available and Animal Genus is scheduled to be released September 2007. Both games are rated “E” for everyone by the ESRB and distributed by Activision…