When the CEO of Scholastic died suddenly last year, he left control of the family empire to a former colleague—who happened to be his ex-girlfriend. Now, a showdown over billions of dollars in kids’ fare may be brewing.
while he was an editor at Knopf and had two Caldecott-winning picture books under his belt. In 1997, Levine brought home a manuscript from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair that he desperately wanted to buy: It was about a young boy named Harry Potter.Bidding against nine other publishers, Levine began to lose hope that he could acquire the book by a fledgling writer named J.K. Rowling. But every time the auction price went up, Barbara Marcus approved the deal without second-guessing.
Starting around 2005, Robinson split up Marcus’s domain, with the trade books, clubs, and fairs divisions each now controlled by different managers. “[Marcus] had just become too powerful in the company,” one former employee told me, a belief echoed by several other former colleagues. “[Dick] didn’t want one of his underlings to have that much power.
“One of the main things at Scholastic was the carpet,” says a former executive. Printed over and over on it was Scholastic’s credo and editorial platform, penned by founder Maurice Robinson, which in part declared the company’s belief in “the worth and dignity of each individual,” “respect for the diverse groups in our multicultural society,” and “high moral and spiritual values.
“As parents, Dick and I encouraged our sons to pursue their own passions and interests and to not feel obligated to join the company,” Benham says. “But given that both of us were committed to Scholastic, the company was in their blood, so to speak.” Ben, now 35, is an aspiring writer who runs a sawmill and workshop on the Vineyard, while Reece has embarked on a fledgling career as a filmmaker.
“It’s worse than a normal death because of the sense of betrayal that everybody’s feeling. A big mistake is what it was.” Trying to find out what Lucchese has accomplished at Scholastic has been difficult, though, since neither she nor those currently in the company will speak in specifics. Her bio says she has “worked to modernize Scholastic for the digital age, forge new and innovative partnerships, and extend the Company’s reach to diverse audiences, focusing on content development and the strengthening of the Scholastic brand in publishing and education.
Lucchese learned everyone’s name on set, Kerner says, just as Robinson once had within the company. She is now engaged to’s visual-effects supervisor, Blair Clark, a relationship she kept so private that Kerner didn’t find out until they were on the red carpet for thepremiere in New York in November. “I didn’t know!” he says with a laugh. “And by the way, she and I would talk all the time.
Another former employee notes that “he had his sons very late in life, and they were very young.” That person says, “I think he had always hoped that Reece would take over—and I think he never thought he was ever going to die.”
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