Founded: 1973
NAIC: 511120 Periodical Publishers
SIC: 2721 Periodicals
Much like the lovable insects that inhabit the pages of its literary magazines, Carus Publishing Company holds a small but important place in the immense landscape of children's publishing. Issues concerning literacy and the importance of quality children's literature have long been a major factor in the company's business. From the debut of Cricket magazine in 1973 to operations spanning three divisions--Cricket Magazine Group, Cobblestone Publishing, and Cricket Books--three decades later, the enterprise has attracted and nurtured millions of young readers. Dodging the attempts of early critics to squash its publishing success, Carus Publishing Company, founded by the Carus family, has left an indelible mark on the field of children's literature.
German Roots
Carus Publishing Company is the literal and figurative offspring of the intricate merger of science, arts, and education, with roots in Germany. In 1852 Paul Carus was born in Germany. He later earned a doctorate in philosophy and classical philology (the scientific study of texts) and began a writing career. In 1876 he began teaching in a military academy, but his liberal religious views clashed with the school's more conservative ideals. Concerned about censorship and in a quest for freedom of expression, Carus moved to England where he wrote poetry and learned to speak and write English. Subsequently he was offered a job in the United States to edit a German American journal. He immigrated to New York and stayed there for a few years. In 1887 Edward Hegeler, another German immigrant, offered him an editing job in La Salle, Illinois, a small town about 100 miles southwest of Chicago.
Hegeler, a metallurgical engineer, was also interested in philosophy and religion. He had immigrated from Germany to Illinois to begin a zinc-smelting business. He later founded the Open Court Magazine to promote his ideas about the relationship between scientific study and religion, culture, and philosophy. Hegeler initially offered Carus a job to translate German articles into English. Soon after, Carus became editor of Open Court and published his first article, "The Harmony of the Spheres." Within a year, Carus married Hegeler's daughter, Mary.
The Carus-Hegeler family and their descendants continued to manage the chemical and publishing businesses throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1921, one of the children, Dr. Edward Hegeler Carus, married. His son, Blouke, followed in his great-grandfather's scientific footsteps and became an electrical engineer with an interest in chemistry and foreign languages. Blouke went to the University of Freiburg in Germany to continue his studies and met Marianne, a German native. Marianne and Blouke eventually married, studied French literature and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, and moved back to Illinois to run the Carus family businesses (Carus Chemical Company and Open Court Publishing). In 1962 Blouke and Open Court Publishing Company developed a breakthrough reading and language arts program for kindergarten through sixth-grade students (this phonics-based reading program eventually led to the Basic Readers, a K-6 reading and writing program launched several years later).
About the same time, Marianne and Blouke had children of their own. When their oldest child began to read, they became disappointed in the quality and content of available children's books. In the hopes of finding compelling and educational literature, Marianne tracked down classic children's stories in St. Nicholas, a 1930s magazine edited by acclaimed American author Mary Mapes Dodge. St. Nicholas, however, was out of print, and Marianne and Blouke decided to start a magazine of their own, following in St. Nicholas's literary tradition.
Bugs in the Big City
In the early 1970s the Carus family business was enjoying success in the elementary school market through its Open Court Publishing Company. In 1971 Blouke Carus and a group of educators developed the Basic Readers, a new basal reading program based on classic literature from authors such as William Shakespeare, Aristotle, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes, and from Grimm's Fairy Tales. Children learned how to read and think at the same time. It was this same concept the Caruses hoped to instill in their new magazine venture. With high hopes and a bit of naïveté, the couple jumped feet first into the sea of children's literature, when there were nearly 85 children's magazines in publication at the time.
Their first plea for acceptance and exposure came in the form of a launching party at the St. Moritz Hotel in New York City. They invited publishers, agents, editors, critics, authors, and illustrators. The evening hit a high point when author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who later won the Nobel Prize for literature, amused the audience with witty anecdotes about why he liked children. Singer commented on how children could "sin without making long and boring confessions," and how they did not "feel guilty for being healthy, beautiful and charming." The New York publishing world was soon aware of this new children's publication called Cricket. Its pilot issue, in 1973, featured Arnold Lobel's "Frog and Toad" story and Sid Fleischman's "McBroom the Rainmaker." Both stories went on to become timeless, award-winning classics, as did many other works published in Cricket.
By 1974 the company had grown to six employees and maintained its production and editing in La Salle. Carus hired Clifton Fadiman (a former New Yorker book reviewer) as senior editor and designer John Grandits. Manuscripts from many well-known authors, including Singer, continued to roll in. Although many critics predicted a short life for this chirping insect and recommended a stylized, colorful redesign of the original black anatomically correct bug appearing on its pages, Cricket had nearly 100,000 subscribers by 1976 while preserving its black bug. The original bug was drawn by author/illustrator Trina Schart Hyman (Cricket's newly hired art director), whose design was prompted by Marianne Carus's fondness of the storytelling cricket in Singer's A Day of Pleasure.
During the next decade, the company ventured overseas. In response to British readers who requested a magazine in England, Cricket and Company was launched in 1976. While 45,000 young British readers were happy, publication and advertising costs became too costly. Fourteen months later the British division ceased production. In 1988 Marianne and Blouke Carus crossed the ocean again, this time to Norway for the biannual International Board on Books for Young People Congress, where they met an editorial director of children's magazines at Bayard Press in France. Bayard published 14 children's magazines and from them the Caruses garnered ideas for a new magazine geared toward readers younger than Cricket's targeted six- through 12-year-olds. After purchasing a few stories and art from Bayard, Cricket was ready to welcome a new friend.
Insects Galore, 1990 to 2000
From 1990 to 2000 Carus more than doubled its insect collection and readership. After a brief encounter with Bayard Press, Carus unveiled Cricket's friend, Ladybug, a magazine intended for two- to seven-year-old readers in 1990. In addition to high-quality short stories, Ladybug featured colorful illustrations by award-winning artists and activities to promote reading. Within two years Ladybug had amassed 130,000 paid subscriptions while Cricket had a paid circulation of 110,000 readers. In 1992 both magazines charged $29.97 for an annual subscription.
For the next several years, Carus Publishing experienced many changes in its business. In 1994 the company launched Spider, for six- to nine-year-olds, and Babybug, board-book magazines for six-month- to two-year-olds. Two years later, in 1996, SRA/McGraw-Hill, a division of the McGraw-Hill Company, paid $31.2 million in cash for the assets of Open Court Publishing, Carus's textbook publishing division. Textbooks generated more than $20 million in sales for Open Court but the company could not compete with rivals in the educational publishing marketplace. André Carus, Blouke's son who had taken over as chief executive of the Carus Publishing empire, arranged a licensing deal with McGraw-Hill to publish academic and trade books under an Open Court imprint. The other operating division of Carus Publishing, "bug magazines" as Marianne Carus called them, enjoyed continued success, reaching 330,000 subscriptions in 1996.
While agreements were ironed out with McGraw-Hill in 1996, other Carus collaborations were in the works. Aiming to inspire children's knowledge and enthusiasm for science while continuing the guiding Carus mission to promote reading, Cricket Magazine Group struck a deal with the Smithsonian Institution to publish Muse in 1997 for nine- to 14-year-olds, Click in 1998 for three- to seven-year-olds, and Ask in 2002 for seven- to ten-year-olds. These publications featured nonfiction articles rich in the Smithsonian's research on topics such as travel, genetics, ancient world history, and architecture. The magazines also included something Cricket readers were not accustomed to: advertising. Cricket received a percentage of the ads sold by the Smithsonian; both companies shared the start-up costs. In 1996 Carus Publishing earned about $12 million in annual revenue.
For the remainder of the 1990s Carus Publishing continued to grow. In 1998, responding to requests from longtime and graduating readers of Cricket, Carus began Cicada, a magazine for readers 14 years and older. Also in 1998, Carus ventured into the book publication market, forming an alliance with Front Street Books, a North Carolina-based independent publisher. The new book division, Cricket Books, targeted beginning and middle-grade readers. With plans to release six book titles by the end of 1999 and 12 per year thereafter, Carus Publishing was operating in the black and set to tackle the new challenges of a new millennium.
Beyond the Bug
By 2000 Carus Publishing had cornered the high-quality children's magazine market, with seven magazines and a book division. Plans for expansion were still underway, however. As the new century began, one of the first journeys Carus took was a venture into children's magazines focusing on the histories and cultures of the world and the United States. The ideal companion turned out to be Cobblestone Publishing, which had been producing history magazines for children since 1980. Cobblestone became a nonfiction magazine division of Carus and with it came seven publications: Cobblestone, Faces, Dig, Odyssey, Calliope, Footsteps, and Appleseeds. It was a natural union of two companies known for their passion to provoke thought and discourse through fun children's reading.
The same year, Marc Aronson, who had been senior editor for Holt Books for Young Readers, joined the editing staff at Cricket Books and started a line of books specifically for teenagers. The name of the new division, Marcato Books, was chosen to represent a musical term meaning "with a distinct accent," reflecting Aronson's interest in music and his vision for the line of books. Aronson stayed on as editor of the book division for four years.
As Carus Publishing and its literary insects were weaving a metaphorical worldwide web, the company also crept into the virtual world of the Internet. The company went online with cricketmag.com in 1997. Marketing Director Jeanne Kerl told Forbes in a Fall 2000 Supplement, "We see the Web site as a way for kids to find great Web links, listen to songs featured in our magazines, and even to work on crossword puzzles. Parents and teachers can find reading recommendations activities for the family." With this move, the company began to overcome its reliance on traditional modes of communication and advertising.
Prior to the web site, Carus had used only direct-mail subscription sales, placed ads in upscale publications such as the New Yorker, and put ads on local classical and public radio stations. The web site opened a world of opportunities to reach the company's targeted audience while keeping tabs on a tight advertising budget. Carus allocated only 5 percent of its advertising dollars to ads featured on web sites outside of cricketmag.com and found they spent less than traditional print advertising.
Thirty years after its inception, it was clear Marianne Carus's Cricket was invincible. Pleased with its ongoing success, in 2003 Carus edited Celebrate Cricket, an illustrated book reminiscing about the company's beginnings and including recollections by the publisher's impressive roster of writers and illustrators including William Saroyan, James Herriot, and Jane Yolen. Two years later, in 2005, in an effort to remain competitive in the multibillion-dollar children's publishing market, Carus Publishing moved its executives and employees away from small-town Illinois to Chicago where they hoped to attract more talented publishing professionals.
Despite its primary competitors having higher recorded revenues (Highlights for Children at $100 million and Weekly Reader reaching $21.8 million), Carus Publishing's $15.7 million in revenue in 2007 was a proud achievement, as the company maintained its focus of providing a superior product to discriminating readers. Marianne Carus, who was 70 years old and still editor-in-chief of Cricket, wrote in Celebrate Cricket that the company's guiding mission had always been "to create in children a love of reading by sustaining a lively, witty, and cheerful tone and a sense of humor."
Principal Divisions
Cobblestone Publishing; Cricket Books; Cricket Magazine Group.
Principal Competitors
American Girl, Inc.; Disney Publishing Worldwide; Highlights for Children, Inc.; National Geographic Society; Weekly Reader Corporation.
Further Reading
Borden, Jeff, "Cricket Publisher Makes Leap into Science-Education Venture," Crain's Chicago Business, December 9, 1996, p. 6.
Carus, Marianne, ed., Celebrate Cricket, Chicago: Cricket Books, 2003.
"Front Street and Cricket Announce Joint Venture," Publishers Weekly, March 2, 1998, p. 16.
Hechinger, Fred, "About Education; Magazines for Children Address Serious Topics," New York Times, June 11, 1985, p. C7.
Knutson, Carol, "Jumping (Virtual) Hurdles," Forbes, Fall 2000 Supplement, p. 83.
Milliot, Jim, "McGraw-Hill Cos. Buys Open Court Text Division," Publishers Weekly, March 25, 1996, p. 12.
O'Brien, Ken, "Roots of Carus Corp. Reach Back to Germany," Chicago Tribune, October 23, 1994, p. 3.
Smith, Wes, "Keeping the Right Chemistry Carus' Corporate Collection Ranges from Potassium Permanganate to Marty the Inchworm," Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1992, p. 1.
Trohan, Walter, "Johnny Can Read, If It's Readable," Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1971, p. 10.
— Jodi Essey-Stapleton
