Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) announced today a partnership with education nonprofit City Year to launch HMH Classroom Corps, a unique multi-tiered program that provides employees with opportunities to connect with teachers and students in schools across the United States. Part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility program, HMH Classroom Corps will connect employees with local City Year chapters to host Learning Forums—interactive events focused on helping students build literary and math skills through hands-on activities. In March, HMH employees across three offices participated in the inaugural Learning Forums at P.S. 75 School of Research and Discovery in New York City, the Lake View YMCA in Chicago, and the Curtis Guild Elementary School in Boston. Volunteers guided elementary school students through literacy and STEM activities, including assembling geometric shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks, conducting volcano experiments, and performing short plays from HMH’s Readers’ Theater collection. Each student was able to select from hundreds of donated HMH books to take home. Click Read More below for additional information.

A number of big summer bestsellers, a surge in interest in books on social justice, and ongoing demand by parents for children’s books that both educate and entertain combined to continue to push up unit sales of print books through this year’s third quarter. According to NPD BookScan, print unit sales rose 6.4% for the nine months ended Oct. 3, 2020 over the comparable span in 2019. Unit sales jumped 29.1% in the juvenile nonfiction category, led by huge demand for Big Preschool Workbook, which sold nearly 649,000 print copies in the period, and My First Learn-to-Write Workbook by Crystal Radke, which sold almost 595,000 copies.

At an event here to celebrate the new Holiday Elves stamps, with Santa, Mrs. Claus, reindeer and the Santa Claus House (on St. Nicholas Drive!) as the backdrop, the Postal Service announced that letters for the 110-year-old USPS Operation Santa program can be sent beginning today — six weeks earlier than previous years. The holiday season is here! “USPS Operation Santa allows generous customers to grant the holiday wishes of children and families in need. The program is now accepting wish lists for this year’s program,” said Michael Elston, the Secretary of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, who served as the dedicating official for the stamp event. “We know this is earlier than usual, but we’re pretty excited to get the season started and we know kids around the country are eager to write to Santa, using these stamps on the envelopes.”