Kids book tycoon leaves a mystery behind
The unexpected death of the head of the children’s book publishing giant behind Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Clifford the
Big Red Dog, produced a surprise ending of his own: He left control of his $1.2 billion company and all his possessions to the company’s chief strategy officer, a Toronto woman he reportedly had a romance with.
That M. Richard (Dick) Robinson Jr. left everything to Iole Lucchese rather than to his former wife, two sons, or his four siblings is causing alarm, family drama and potential highstakes legal action, which is more than enough for a sequel to any story, according to reporting in The Wall Street Journal.
Robinson, 84, had been in excellent health and still overseeing day-to-day operations as chairman and chief executive officer of Scholastic Corporation when he died suddenly in June, while out walking in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
Lucchese, 54, was born in Toronto, the daughter of teachers, and graduated from the University of Toronto.
She landed her first fulltime job working with Scholastic Canada Book Clubs, a cherished part of many Canadians’ childhood, that distributed catalogues of inexpensive books to children in classrooms and ran inschool book fairs.
In Robinson’s will, signed in 2018, he described Lucchese as “my partner and closest friend,” according to reporters Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Shalini Ramachandran, who reviewed the will.
Robinson and Lucchese had been in a long-term romantic relationship that many thought had ended, the WSJ reports.
Robinson’s youngest son, Maurice (Reece) Robinson, 25, told the reporters his father’s decision was “unexpected and shocking,” while his eldest son, John Benham (Ben) Robinson, 34, described the estate and succession as “salt in an open wound.”
“You might think from the will that he didn’t see his sons. That’s not true. For the last two years, I saw him multiple times a week,” Reece Robinson is quoted as saying.
The family says their father and mother, Robinson’s former wife Helen Benham, had recently again become close during the pandemic.
Robinson met his former wife, Benham, at Scholastic when she worked in the art department, but they didn’t begin dating until the 1980s, according to the WSJ. She worked for more than three decades at the company and was on its board of directors for a time. They divorced in 2003, and she left the family firm.
“I lived and breathed Scholastic while also raising our two children. Dick told me on more than one occasion, ‘You care more about Scholastic than I do,’” she told the reporters.
National Post did not receive a response to a request for comment from Scholastic or Lucchese prior to publication deadline.
Despite the 30-year gap between them and the shock of his family, the situation does not seem a stark case of a lover bizarrely getting a family firm at the expense of an established family succession plan.
Lucchese has worked at Scholastic for 30 years after her start at the company’s Canadian book club. In Toronto she rose to head the Canadian division’s publishing and marketing group before moving to Scholastic’s head office in New York City, according to her corporate biography.
She was named Scholastic’s chief strategy officer in 2014 and was appointed executive vice president in 2016.
Scholastic’s website credits her with modernizing the company for the digital age, expanding partnerships, and for relaunching Scholastic Entertainment for developing book characters into movies and television.
Robinson’s two sons had limited involvement in the firm.
Ben Robinson runs a sawmill and workshop making furniture and wood products from Martha’s Vineyard trees and lives off the land, the WSJ says. Reece Robinson hasn’t worked full-time at the company, telling the paper: “I didn’t want to sacrifice my early 20s to work at a corporation.”
In a reshuffling of the company hierarchy last month in response to Robinson’s death, Peter Warwick, who sat as an independent director on the company’s board for seven years, was named the new president and chief executive.
Lucchese was named chair of the board of directors.
A new company director was also named in the reshuffle: Robert Dumont was a designee of the Robinson Family, the company said. He is a lawyer specializing in tax and estate planning.
At the time of Robinson’s death, the company’s board of directors expressed sadness and praised his passion and literacy advocacy.
“Dick was a true visionary in the world of children’s books and an unrelenting advocate for children’s literacy and education with a remarkable passion his entire life. The company’s directors and employees, as well as the many educators, parents and students whose
lives he touched, mourn his loss.”
Scholastic calls itself the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books.
The company was started by Robinson’s father, Maurice R. (Robbie) Robinson in 1920. It began as a magazine publisher in Pennsylvania and published its first book in 1926.
The in-class book forms began in 1948.
Its first international branch was in Canada, which opened in 1957.
Robinson took over from his father in 1974.
Along with signing the U.S. rights to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Scholastic published the popular The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.
In 1963, Scholastic launched the first book featuring Clifford the Big Red Dog, by Norman Bridwell, a character which became an endearing childhood favourite and has a new live-action feature film that was scheduled to premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival but was recently postponed.
Other popular Scholastic book series include Captain Underpants, The Magic School Bus, The Baby-sitters Club, and Goosebumps.