Vinyl records are back! Look inside any bookstore or walk down Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and you’ll see the sleek covers of vinyl LPs stacked prominently for a new generation of listeners.
If you need more proof, check out this article on the New York Times on how vinyl sales are affecting the music charts again. For this week’s throwback, we’re taking a look at the records published by Scholastic. Down in the Archive, we found a fantastic collection of audiobooks and learning supplements in record form.
Growing up, record players where something I saw as little more than “antique” pieces of furniture—which means I had to ask our librarian Deimosa how records even worked, to her horror. She explained that Scholastic distributed 33 ⅓ rpm records, which have longer play times and were ideal for albums.
The items below were published by Scholastic Records, which was housed under Scholastic Magazines, Inc. We came upon many Clifford the Big Red Dog records, of course, along with classic stories, nursery rhymes, and educational supplements with filmstrips:
Pictured above:
- Clifford Takes a Trip by Norman Bridwell, Scholastic Records, 1966
- The Three Billy-Goats Gruff by Susan Blair, Scholastic Records, 1967
- Daytime/Nighttime by Judy Reisman, Scholastic Records, 1969
Pictured above:
- Train Ballads, arranged and conducted by Buryl Red, Scholastic Records, 1969
- City Mouse-Country Mouse and two more tales from Aesop narrated by Eric Berger, Scholastic Records, 1970
- Just in Time for the King’s Birthday, narrated by Robert Dryden, 1970
Pictured above:
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, narrated by George Rose, Scholastic Records, 1971
- Clifford Gets a Job by Norman Bridwell, Scholastic Records, 1972
- The Magic Fish by Freya Littleday, narrated by Alan Mills, Scholastic Records, 1972
Pictured above:
- The Elves and the Shoemaker, retold by Freya Littledale, Scholastic Records, 1975
- Miss Nelson is Back by Harry Allard, narrated by Sandy Duncan, 1988
- The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, narrated by Jane Harvey, Scholastic Records, 1989
Special thanks to Gina Asprocolas and the Scholastic librarians for their help with this series!
Raisa Masood
