Scholastic opens the book on tween life

The Do’s and Don’ts of teen and tween life is the burning issue of six new nonfiction titles from Scholastic, which tackle topics as diverse as getting over a break-up to enduring a horrifying haircut, and everything in between: All About You: Scope Out Your Life (June, US$4.50), What’s Your Guy-Q? (July, US$4.99), Cool In School (July, US$3.99), Get Over It! (July, US$4.99), All About You: Girls Speak Out About Everything (August, US$4.50) and The Rules for Teens (August, US$4.99). Scholastic is promoting all of the titles through its summer book hotline 1-800-938-1914, where it will provide audio excerpts of the books, and on its Web site, Scholastic.com. Additionally, starting in the summer, Scholastic will run separate promotions for The Rules, which is based on the top-selling self-help book on dating for women, through Teen magazine, where a sampling of the book will appear Scholastic is also currently featuring The Rules in its magalogue, Free Lunch, which is available through most retailers.

Random picks up Golden droppings

Random House Children’s books has inked a five-year licensing agreement with Disney Publishing Worldwide, giving it the rights to produce, market and distribute English-language books based on Disney characters for the U.S. and Canada. The deal, which goes into effect in January 2001, will see Random publish a range of book formats that incorporate all Disney-branded animated and live-action TV and film properties. Random House takes control of the category from Golden Books, which in March ended its 70-year relationship with the studio, citing waning sales of its Disney titles as the chief reason. Random’s agreement with Disney is much broader than Golden’s, according to Disney spokesman John Singh, and will include coloring and activity books, as well as additional formats like over-sized storybooks, novelty books and early reader titles, which were previously published under Disney Publishing Worldwide’s Mouseworks imprint.

Viz launches new old Gundam series

In August, San Francisco-based manga publisher Viz Communications will release a new monthly comic, Gundam Wing: Ground Zero, featuring stories based on the early episodes of the anime series, which currently airs on Cartoon Network in the U.S. The comics, which, according to Viz, will skew more strongly to girls 13 and up (a slightly older demo than the show attracts), feature four Gundam stories and will retail for US$2.95 each. At press time, Viz was in discussions with Gundam master toy licensee Bandai to do a cross-promotion involving the comics, to kick off in August. For the period covering March 6 to April 23, GW averaged a 0.9 share with kids in the six to 11 range, according to TN Media, the media buying arm of True North Communications.