This October, Scholastic will relaunch Rachel Vail’s tween girl perennial fave The Friendship Ring series in reformatted digest editions. The first four reformatted titles, which retail for US$3.99 each, include If You Only Knew; Please, Please, Please; Not That I Care and What Are Friends For? Scholastic is backing the series’ release with a national publicity campaign, in-store merchandising, floor displays and give-aways. Bonus friendship rings and bookmarks will be available free with purchase. The series will be given the full developing-franchise push as a Scholastic-produced TV series based on the FR books is currently in the works and is slated to hit the airwaves in fall 2000.

In September, Scholastic, in association with the creators of gURL.com, will publish a book called Deal With It (US$14.95). The paperback will serve as a manual of sorts for young women as they come to terms with their sexuality, bodies and emotions in those pivotal teen years. It will be supported by national advertising and publicity campaigns, and given coverage on Scholastic.com as well as gURL.com, which averages over 20 million hits monthly. dELIA’s, gURL’s sister site, will promote the title in its catalog and Web site.