Craig Walker died of cancer on 1 July 2007. Aged 63, he was the vice president and senior editorial director of trade paperbacks at Scholastic.
Walker first joined the company in 1983 as assistant editor of the See Saw Book Club, and then founded the Firefly Book Club for preschoolers. He left for positions at Grosset & Dunlap and Price Stern Sloan, and then returned to Scholastic in 1994 as editorial director of trade paperbacks.
Scholastic issued a statement saying “Craig was a brilliant paperback publisher. He left his enduring mark on the books he published, the people he worked with here at Scholastic… [and] the children’s book industry.”