This morning Scholastic announced a new partnership with Ruckus Media. Together they will “publish top children’s authors across all platforms, including print, e-books and enhanced e-books, with Ruckus Media publishing interactive story apps.”

It seems to us that this joint venture will help Scholastic compete in the digital space where there has been some serious growth as of late.

From the press release:

With more than a dozen projects already in development, the first releases are planned for 2012.

Scholastic will publish, market and distribute titles for ages infant through teen developed under the Ruckus imprint through Scholastic’s vast school-based book clubs and book fairs channels and through retail and libraries, and will manage publishing rights for the print and e-books worldwide. In addition to intellectual property from titles in the Ruckus library and new projects developed for both digital and print, Ruckus Media is aggressively acquiring rights to out-of-print backlist titles to publish in print or in e-book formats to be distributed by Scholastic under the Ruckus imprint.

There’s no word yet on whether books we already cover (such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games) will be involved in this strategy.