[2] From the beginning The New Book of Knowledge was lauded by critics, who praised it as one of the best encyclopedias for its target demographic, albeit the most expensive.

[4] The encyclopedia also utilized definition boxes that explained technical terms that were bolded in the article.

[4] Other features included excerpts from literature such as portions of the Arabian Nights and "Paul Revere's Ride", as well as practical how to guides, such as "How to build an ant observatory" and "Making your own weather observation".

[6] The 1985 edition of the encyclopedia had 21 volumes, 10,540 page, 9,116 articles (not including the definitions in the index), 22,500 illustrations (three fourths of which were in color) and 1,046 maps.

All the articles were signed (again, excluding entries in the "Dictionary index"), and an editorial staff of 50 was listed at the beginning of Vol.

Directed at parents, librarians and teachers, this booklet gave graded bibliographies on 1,000 subjects keyed to articles in the set.

They employed the Dale-Chall Readability Formula to make sure the material was comprehensible, informative and interesting.

[13] In 2000, Scholastic Corporation acquired Grolier and now has full rights to the contents of The New Book of Knowledge.

[19][20] A Spanish language version of The New Book of Knowledge, El Nuevo Tesoro de Juventud was published in Mexico City.

[7][21] In the mid-1980s, Grolier oversaw the creation of the Knowledge Exploration Series—a set of five microcomputer software programs that were designed to work with the 64K Apple II.