Издательство Highlights Press увеличило продажи на 29% и стало 17-м крупнейшим издателем детской литературы

As Highlights for Children turns 80 this year, the company’s 11-year-old Highlights Press imprint is celebrating the milestone with sales growth that is significantly outpacing not only the children’s book market as a whole but also the red-hot activity book category, its core area of expertise. According to BookScan data supplied by Chris Bauerle, VP of books and retail at Highlights, the imprint’s year-to-date sales are up 29%. It has become the 17th largest children’s publisher and boasts both significant market shares and fast growth in categories such as games, activities, and hobbies; juvenile nonfiction; and early-learning workbooks. “I think that we are in, I wouldn’t say a moment, but a cultural reset or recalibration,” Bauerle said. “There’s a shift in how families are thinking about screen time. Consumers are saying they see children’s books as an incredible cure to this need they’re feeling to have their kids spend less time on screens and be more engaged with nondigital content.” Bauerle credits the company’s new management team on the sales, marketing, and distribution side, put in place over the last couple of years, for helping the company take advantage of these trends. “We’ve assembled an all-star cast to add to our really powerful product development team, and we’ve spent the last two and a half years building a well-run unit,” he said. The company has increased its marketing effectiveness while reducing the spend, and boosted internal sales support for its distributor, Penguin Random House. “We’re positioned in such a way that we are able to take advantage of this tailwind that the entire industry is experiencing.” Keeping current How does an 80-year-old brand continue to resonate with today’s consumers? “I think it’s the founding mission, that children are the world’s most important people and their voices are worth listening to,” Bauerle said. “Our founders, Garry Cleveland Myers and Caroline Clark Myers, had this radical belief, at the time, that children are capable thinkers,” said Marlo Scrimizzi, senior director, editorial. “They really believed in nurturing children’s curiosity and helping them think things through themselves, and also making sure that learning is joyful and a lot of fun. We still bake that into our philosophy. In all of our products, we help kids become curious, creative, caring, and confident.” The company’s diversification strategy has also kept it relevant. “Everybody knows us as a magazine, right? But we’re way more than a magazine,” Bauerle said. Highlights Press has been growing in areas such as non-consumable books, a fact which has helped the company expand its presence in places like libraries. Examples include baby books such as Daddy’s Little Burrito and Grandma’s Little Love Bug, both touch-and-feel titles with crinkle-foil, and Unicorn Surprise!, featuring felt flaps and a mirror. The imprint is also increasing its range of fiction and nonfiction releases. The latter include The Ultimate Science Cookbook for Kids, published last year, and a new science series called Why, How, and Wow!, which debuted with Space in February. Dinosaurs will follow in 2027. Each book in this series answers more than 150 questions from kids. As is Highlights’ practice, the books present open-ended questions to keep young readers engaged and challenge them to find the answers for themselves. “We get over 400,000 correspondences from kids a year,” Scrimizzi said. “They send us questions, they tell us what’s on their minds, they send us their drawings, their poems, and their artwork. We really get that close view into what kids are thinking and we use that knowledge in our publishing.” Highlights is also growing its book-plus and maker titles. This fall, it is publishing Make Your Own Gem Art: Unicorn, which comes with more than 1,500 gems and other supplies; a book featuring storytelling, doodling, stickers, and Hidden Pictures puzzles; and a scene for display. The publisher also recently signed licensing deals with two toy brands, Crazy Aaron’s and Plus-Plus, for collaborative book-plus titles. Meanwhile, the Highlights Learning imprint, which launched in 2017, is also going strong, with its Big Fun Workbooks line combining for 240,000 copies sold this year so far. Meanwhile, the list of core activity, puzzle, and humor books continues to grow, with both backlist and frontlist titles driving sales. The Hardest Hidden Pictures Ever was the company’s number one title last year, with 200,000 copies sold at retail. That book, along with The Ultimate Puzzle Challenge!, The Silliest Hidden Pictures Book Ever, and Easter Hidden Pictures Puzzles to Highlight have been among the standouts this year to date. Two new titles illustrate Highlights’ editorial point of view. One is Escape Rooms!, due out in October. “I think it’s very quintessentially Highlights,” Scrimizzi said. Readers solve logic puzzles and signature Highlights puzzles to get through six themed areas, including a dinosaur world and a haunted cheese factory, before solving a final puzzle to exit the game. The other is Can You Find Steve?, a February 2026 seek-and-find release about a rubber duck named Steve that’s obsessed with hide-and-seek, and his friend Hank, a dinosaur that tends to get in his way. “It’s filled with so much humor, there are puzzles woven in, and then at the end it becomes a story about friendship,” Scrimizzi said. Highlights for Children also markets subscription boxes; has a partnership program with companies like Google, Ringling Brothers, Hewlett Packard, and professional sports teams; and just launched an early learning program in Florida that partners with schools, agencies, and foundations in that state to offer play-based preschool and kindergarten readiness resources for kids up to five. As it marks the 80th year since the founding of Highlights magazine, Highlights for Children is positioned to meet its readers, and their parents and caregivers, where they want to be in 2026: having fun, thinking and learning, developing kindness—and taking a break from their screens. It all goes back to the founders’ mission. “They were convinced that there was power in content to inspire joyful learning that kids would seek out and love,” Bauerle said. “Children will actually tell you exactly what they need if you just listen to them.”