School Book Fair Season

This post originated in an email I wrote a friend. Thought others would enjoy it, too, so I have expanded on it a little.

For the last few years, I have been volunteering with the book fairs the local school holds every conference week. That’s one in the autumn and one in the spring.

I do this because I remember how nice it was to be able to buy a book for myself when I was a child. My mother would send me to school with a five dollar bill (it went a lot further in those days), and I could buy anything I wanted. A story book, a book about horses, a poster of an owl… I remember buying things like that.

Nowadays, they also have little craft kits, games, fancy pens, books for adults… like everything else in the United States, school book fairs (put on by Scholastic Books for as long as I can remember) have become bigger and glitzier. And unfortunately, the books themselves are no longer at reduced prices compared to other publishers. They are the same prices you find in any store, which means that the purpose of the original book fairs, to make books affordable for children, has changed to be making a profit.

Still, most kids have parents that are willing to support their kids’ reading, so they will send along a few dollars for their kids to stop by on their lunch recess, or show up after the conference to shop with the children.

It’s fun to watch the littlest kids. The little girls have their money neatly folded and sorted in darling little purses, the little boys have it all jumbled up and crumpled in their pockets. And of course, none of them have any idea how much they actually have…

The middle-ages come in with their friends and earnestly discuss the merits of each book, from the ones for babies to the ones for parents, walk around with some under an arm and then put them back. Then they’ll come up to the register and ask to have a stack
“put on hold” until their parents come to pick them up. By the end of the week there’s quite a stack behind the volunteers.

The oldest kids (the school goes from kindergarten to 8th grade) wander in as if they aren’t really interested… in gangs and gaggles! All week long they will wander in and out looking bored and disinterested. Then on Friday, the last day of the sale, they go straight to the shelves that caught their attention and come up with just the right amount of money to make the purchase.

It’s so much fun to watch this process, and a little sad to realize that it’s as close to a real book store as most of these kids ever get.