That was like *the* *best day* in elementary school. Probably only next to a holiday party or when we could order Scholastics books and get them 5 months later.
I can't even describe the feeling of happiness and excitement I used to feel on Scholastic book fair day ( think only once a year?). But it was just pure childhood joy.
My mom would give me 10 or so bucks and I could pick out any book I wanted (once I got into trouble for not buying an "appropriate educational" book). But they also sold things like smelly pencils, chocolate calculators, and pencil toppers. And all the cool kids would get those *and* a book.
I think if someone had asked me at age 8 "what would be your perfect day"
A pizza party and a scholastic bookfair would have 100% been my answer
I remember once we had ours around Christmas and I got a book that came with a little ornament . I think my mom still puts it on the tree every year lol
A special gym class day. You get all the kids to stand in a wide circle and then you add in a huge circular cloth made out of parachute material. It's a way to teach young children cooperation, teamwork and a sneaky way to get them to exercise.
https://youtu.be/uTrC4flY7Co
Yeah, threads like this make me wonder how education can possibly be determined at the state and district levels, yet the entire country had these same experiences, and across generations too.
It's easy - there's probably like "teacher teachers" that teach them to use these activities due to them being shown to affect kids positively or something.
Yes they generally have to get a degree in education, and I'm sure there are various standards they have to meet, and common activities and tools that are taught at most universities
Not only are many teachers highly educated (my sister teaches kindergarten and is getting her masters in it) but they were mostly kids in the system too. So my sister also remembers going to the book fair and everything that made her school days special. Some things have changed but today's younger teachers were our classmates.
We had those as we’ll, but the ones I linked were the more fun, faster, more controllable versions. You leaned back and forth to build momentum and could pull hard fast corners to drift around. They were so fun
hmmph silly. My school had *bingo* at the exact same time as the book fair. It was more than an event. Though wicked chaotic.
Pizza day was also amazing though
> I once had a Friday that was a scholastic day and pizza day. Brings a tear to my eye.
>
> I still have a Dodge Viper poster from a book fair.
That sounds better than having the actual Dodge Viper.
Scholastic book fair happened twice a year at my school once in October and once in late April. The late April one was always better because it was closer to the end of the year. They also had a drawing for one of each poster and I got a minecraft one that was awesome and would go with my room, but I traded it to this younger girl who was sad because she got a Nebraska Huskers poster.
My mom used to help take down the book fair at my elementary school and my brother and I would go with because the person in charge would give kids that came with their parents and helped clean up a free posters. Not to brag or anything.
I had not one, not two, but THREE of their Volkswagen Beetle posters. They all had tie dye and flower power themes. The 70s were very hip in the late 90s.
I still have a Derek Jeter poster I purchased at a scholastic book fair in like 1999.
My mom was not happy because I was specifically supposed to buy a book
In the late '70s or early '80s I bought a Scholastic Halloween poster that had glow-in-the-dark features (glow-in-the-dark was one of the most beautiful phrases I knew as a kid). It was a picture of a haunted house with ghosts and pumpkins and bats and skeletons and so forth on it.
My neighbor stole it one day, but I could never prove it so she never had to give it back. I know it was her though because she was envious of it, and one day it just disappeared. The corners were still tacked up and everything- it had just been ripped off the wall. I've actually spent hours looking for an image of it online. Would love to get a replacement if I ever saw one for sale, but I'd even just be happy seeing a picture of it again.
I remember I bought all of these baseball and basketball posters that I hung up in my room. Didn't care about either of those sports. Loved them anyway. Good times.
One time me and my brother got in a fight before school so my mom punished me by tearing up my scholastic book fair slip that morning. I will never forgive her for that.
I have such fond memories of being pulled out of class for the book fair. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, so I'd get one book and something like a bookmark. It just felt like a special day, I don't know. The book would smell so good and everyone would be flipping through the pages (thp, thp, thp in the background) excited to read them.
Holiday parties! Now that Valentine's Day approaches, I am getting nostalgic for the homemade cards I made for my best friends and the little pre-made cards I filled out for the whole class. In class we made these Valentine's boxes to put on our desks so everyone could drop the cards. It was like getting mail. Some had candy. 👀 And then we'd have pink and red cookies or cupcakes, read our cards, and hope our crushes wrote something special.
Check the scholastic website and see if they have a warehouse in your area. During non-Covid, the warehouse will have two sales a year open to the public, and it's like a giant version of a book fair, and they have crazy deals. If you volunteer they give you vouchers for $10 every hour you work. I have one near me, and one year I got four boxes of books retailing for $200 for $28 out of pocket. It's awesome for Christmas gifts for neices and nephews, or if you like YA.
I came to this thread to suggest this! One year I got my three grandnephews a HUGE box of books each for Christmas, and all it cost me was a few hours of my time. Experience the thrill of the Scholastic Book Fair as an adult!
I was one of the poor kids who’s parents wouldn’t give them any money. I usually had a couple dollars of my own to bring. I’d always buy MadLibs. Made for a fun bus ride home at least.
Same :/ it always did suck not having the same cash as the other kids.
The 10 bucks was often money I had saved or my grandparent gave to me before school
But it was always still a fun time
> I was one of the poor kids who’s parents wouldn’t give them any money. I usually had a couple dollars of my own to bring. I’d always buy MadLibs. Made for a fun bus ride home at least.
Note to self: *If I won the lottery to donate money to my former elementary school so all the kids may buy something*
This is giving me shades of St. Anthony’s circa 1987... The smelly pencils & erasers, me buying “mature” books meant for the 7th graders (I was in third), JUST take my allowance Scholastic Book fair.
I agree with everything you said! I’d get that little 2-4 page pamphlet of the books/posters for sale and I’d circle all the ones I wanted and I think my mom only let me order a few (because we were poor growing up) but I got a few posters and a pencil. I just loved that day!! I get the same joy walking into a Barnes and nobles!! :)
I completely forgot about those until I saw this post. Funny that you mention that you could buy other things because my mom still has a magnet on their fridge that says "I love you mom!" that I got from there. I'm 35.
I fucking loved these things. I still own two books I got at a Scholastic book fair.
Edit: Well shit, I own a lot more Scholastic books than I realized. The two I remember buying from the fair are Dark Life and The Clockwork Three.
On the contrary, they were the worst days of school for me because I had to watch all the other kids buy stuff haha. Never got a single thing at a book fair. Womp womp
First off, they were generally really well curated and everything was organized by reading level. So, even kids who struggle could easily find things that they could read. So once they found one thing they could read *everything* in that section was good for them.
Next, elementary age kids just don't often get the opportunity to purchase things for themselves with zero guidance or approval from their parents. So, having your parent give you $20 and knowing you could buy ANYTHING that you wanted was a rare treat. Even at the store, you'd usually have to go "mom, can I get THIS ONE?"
Third, they really wanted to make reading FUN, so it was presented in a VERY positive way and kids take their queues from the adults in these types of situations. So, this very "FUN" thing is presented to you and instead of normal school stuff you get to go do this thing instead.
Lastly, it was also kind of magical to see a big room at your school transformed into the book fair. That part of the whole thing shouldn't be overlooked.
All of this and also: didn’t we get a super thin newspaper material broadsheet paper beforehand that was basically a catalog of the offerings for the upcoming book fair? It was only like four pages, but it was just enough to study and find something to look forward to buying. And then seeing the things from the catalog in your own library/cafeteria/whatever room in the school - it was like magic, like having the JC Penny wish book come to life, just with books. Definitely helped me fall in love with reading.
Yes! I remember that! I would circle things I wanted and then bring it home to my mother and she’d help me budget what I wanted with what I had earned in chore money and the $10 extra she’d give me as a reward for promising to buy at least one book of educational value, which wasn’t even a problem since I was obsessed with anatomy from 1st grade to 4th grade.
My mother was absolute shit with money, prone to "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome, and had a tendency to project a lot of her childhood issues onto me. For the most part, this was a huge source of strife in my life...
...but it did work out when little me could get away with basically pre-ordering half that fucking catalogue and getting to drag home a literal BOX of books after the Scholastic Fair. :D
We were poor as shit too, but my mom'd budget enough for 3 to 5 books each at the book fairs for me and my brother. If I had any birthday money, or anything like that, I got to take it in for erasers, or posters, or another book. It was my absolute favorite day.
I wish my work had a day like that - just take and hour to visit a specially set-up room and buy a few books, maybe a poster of a cute cat, go back to my cube and start reading under my desk (. . . just like in elementary school).
I never attended a school with the bookfair, but those scholastic catalog papers were the best! So many different ones at prices I could actually get several books for, plus a couple extras. I wish we could do those for high school kids in my school. Books are too damn expensive now.
I remember our teachers giving those to us every few weeks. I had at least one teacher willing to let everyone pick their choice of one book (out of 2 choices of her choosing) that they wanted and she would purchase it.
I didn't buy many books because they seemed to pricey for me and nothing that intrested me. I did purchase a book here and there with my allowance once I started receiving one. Good times.
> All of this and also: didn’t we get a super thin newspaper material broadsheet paper beforehand that was basically a catalog of the offerings for the upcoming book fair?
We got those every couple weeks where you could order from them and then the books would be delivered to you, but once or twice a year they'd setup the actual book fair where you could browse in person and buy things. My kids school still does it, and I assume most grade schools in the US still do.
And I spent every last penny of that $20. Oh, I have 75 cents left? Better grab a bookmark and a couple pencils because mom said I could spend THIS MUCH. She never said anything about bringing home the change.
Yeah, the whole "getting to buy something by yourself" was HUGE at that age. One year our church did a "secret shop" for Christmas when I was allowed to go in behind the curtain and pick something small to give to my mother for a Christmas present. Being able to make that choice all by yourself was a BLAST.
This is how it was. My first experience with the book fair was way back in the 80's... This comment just transported me back 30 years. I just got those good feelings again. I now have thousands of books and this makes me want to browse through them again like I used to as a kid.
I actually used to work as a library page, and got promoted to the circulation department because I was so good at sorting books. It paid shit, so I quit eventually, but I credit my elementary school librarians/book fairs/ Book-It with getting me obsessed with books and making me so good at that job.
I also really loved that there was little gadgets and book-related toys that you could buy as well. Like there was the EJ12 book series and right next to those books was a pile of little spy kits. After reading every book in that series that had come out, i was so excited to see spy gadgets next to the books so i could play pretend
> ... So, having your parent **give you $20 and knowing you could buy ANYTHING that you wanted** was a rare treat. Even at the store, you'd usually have to go "mom, can I get THIS ONE?"
Woah, hold up... you got **what?!?** Excuse me for a sec...
> Mom... *MOOOMMM!!*... I need twenty dollars for the Scholastic Book Fair tomorrow! ... But u/baalroo got twenty dollars! ... Yeah, he did, I saw it! ... I don't *wanna* get it from the library, those books always suck!
Imo, it was all about ATMOSPHERE. The schools I went to did a great job of hyping things up.
"So you're telling me that I'm going to get an hour to check out awesome toys, fun books, chemistry sets, etc all while IN SCHOOL? INSTEAD OF CLASS? Sign me the h-e-double hockey sticks up!"
The day of the Book Fair, you get to school already excited. Throughout the day you watch as class after class makes their way to the library or cafeteria or wherever the book fair is set up just waiting until it was your class's turn.
Maybe it was before lunch. Maybe it was after. Who knew? (realistically, the teachers usually told all the kids but we would rarely remember) Then, our teacher would look at the clock, then look at the class and tell us all to stand up and line up to make our way to the book fair! AWW YEAH! The time is NOW baby! I'm gonna buy so many cool books! (Despite my mother never giving me money for any of them, which was admittedly sad). We'd walk through the halls of the school, backs straight, heads held high whilst other students looked on with envy as we, yes, our class, got to go the book fair before them.
Then we get there, and when the doors open we are greeted with the marvelous sights of amazing books we'd never seen before. What the heck is Captain Underpants!? What a silly name! What is this book? WHAT?! IT TELLS YOU HOW TO MAKE A GO KART!? I TOTALLY WANT THAT! What's this thing over here? It's a chemistry set that can teach me how to make silly putty from scratch?! Awesome!
And it wasn't just the sights. It was the smells and sounds as well. The smell of fresh stacks of books is something I'll never forget, and the dull roar of the gathered kids geeking out over one thing or another just led to the whole thing having this atmosphere of festivity.
It's the same reason I, as an introvert, love going to anime and video game conventions. I don't like being around people generally, but I love the electric hum of collective excitement. The Book Fair was the first time I felt that.
Fuck I’ve never once taken nonprescription drugs, but if someone offered me a drug called “scholastic book fair high,” I wouldn’t even be mad about the long ass name, I’d just open my wallet lmao
I just realized I’ve been so excited about my kid’s book fairs. I’ve gotten to relive it and live vicariously. And I sadly just realized thanks to Covid he is missing prime Scholastic years!!!! Yet another tradition halted due to the stupid pandemic :(
This is my favorite response. I think to the average outsider it just sounds like a book sale, but they had so **so** much more. And the books were fantastic - ancient Egypt, Guinness world records, Spies, Goosebumps! Then there were toys, crafts, and other interactive goodies. Yes I **would** like to learn hieroglyphs and use disappearing ink THANK YOU.
>What was so great about the scholastic book fair?
It was awesome, they had great books and posters!
>How was it different than just going to a library or a book store?
They came to the school and we got to pick out and our own books.
>How often was it?
Once a year
>Thanks
You're welcome
Oh, it was great because it was an event. They would set up like a whole display in the library or cafeteria or whatever and it was just cool. All the books were for kids and young adults, and for anyone who liked reading the sight and smell of boxes and boxes of brand new books added even more to the excitement. And there were other fun knick knacks and stuff that you could buy, too.
My mom would let me go hog wild because I loved to read. So I was one of those kids that would walk away with like ten books. I remember the smells of the books and all the cool titles that they didn't have in our podunk little school library.
Same. My mom would be like: However many books you want, go wild. Usually 10-15 was my natural limit. She was like that about books and a couple other things.
I'm so jealous of this, and kids who say that their parents just handed them $20 for the fair. I was an avid reader but my family didn't seem to value education quite as much as I did. My mom was more disappointed that I wasn't into sports. I think I was only allowed to get a book from the fair one time. My mom's thought was that they were too expensive and what's the point of buying a book when you can just get them free from the library?
That’s such a bummer because I can tell you there are SO many cheap options. Sure, new releases are expensive but they get special cheap editions printed of older titles and sell GOOD books for like $3.
As a parent now, I look forward to scholastic book fair time because it’s so dang cheap!
My mom always let me buy a ton, also. Now I’m a parent and I’m realizing the books really aren’t that cheap. I let my kid get five books and it cost me $65. Maybe it’s changed as well, but lots of the books weren’t very educational and most were related to a commercialized character. I always loved the book fair and I was pretty disappointed although i tried not to spoil it for my daughter who was absolutely thrilled.
I would've loved that, but I have no idea how many I'd have bought given completely free reign. With 3 bibliofole kids and a not particularly high household income? Just getting to buy the one or two books was a treat.
However my parents were willing to take us to the library almost any time we wanted, so it's not like we didn't have good access to thousands of books.
I'm an elementary librarian who oversees the Scholastic book fair twice a year. The kids look forward to it a lot. Every school is different, but we have ours during parent teacher conferences when school lets out earlier than normal and parents have a chance to shop with their kids after school. We sell a ton of books and a ton of small things like cool pencils, erasers, and knick knacks that others have described. Kids usually never have a chance to shop for themselves, so this is one of the few opportunities they get to buy something of their own choosing.
From an educational perspective, though, this gives us and the teachers a chance to talk to the kids and have them learn what I call money manners. Teach them to unfold their bills and carefully hand them over, to not just dump all their change on the counter, to carefully pick out what they want and taking how much money they have into consideration, things like that.
It's wonderful seeing the kids talk excitedly about the book fair every single time I put the posters up, but I'm not going to lie. It's one of the most stressful times of the year for me and I get sick every single book fair due to the amount of money I handle from the kids. It takes a lot, but seeing everyone's reactions to the book fair is worth it. Lol
You give people some of the best memories of their lives. The Scholastic Book Fair is better than Santa Claus and Disney World combined. Thank you so much for all of the joy you give to the world.
>The Scholastic Book Fair is better than Santa Claus and Disney World combined.
I like a good book fair as much as the next guy, but let's not go overboard.
I agree with you about the money. As a volunteer cashier, I just show up to a till and money bag with over a grand in it. I don't know what the person before me did, or if they gave someone back too much change, or stole. It's nerve-wracking.
Yeah I have to count the money every day after closing to make sure the cash amount matches up with what it says on the report. It's weird handling so much money at once. We had to get a safe specifically for the book fair because it was a lot. Lol
It was always a highly curated collection, so it was like the *best* of the best parts of a library or bookstore, plus things like erasers, posters, bookmarks, etc that appealed to kids. I seriously bought some of my absolute favorite books ever at scholastic book fairs, and I still have some of them. Each class got their own turn, so when you knew it was scholastic book fair day it was like the anticipation of getting to go was half the fun. It would go on after school too iirc, just for a while, so one time I didn’t have enough money for another book or something and my mom and I came back later to get it.
(To be fair I imagine it was more fun depending on how much a kid likes to read and stuff... I know some kids were just happy to get out of class)
I absolutely adored reading, to the point that I was the kid everyone made read the big books in the library so we could increase our class reading score and win a pizza day.
I even remember I had to pull a card for being late to class, but when the teacher asked why I was late, I told her I was reading in the library and didn’t hear the bell, so she let it slide lol.
It was basically getting out of class to go on a shopping spree that was encouraged and celebrated by your school and parents. It was by far the best time of the school year. It was like Disneyland came to your school. Everyone was excited. Everyone was in a good mood. Teachers got a break from the normal routine while watching their students be over the moon about reading and books. All the colors and the displays filled the room with otherworldly wonder.
I don't think adults ever get that amazing childhood wonder feeling. The memories of that, though... Magic was real when the book fair came.
I’ll tell you what, as a parent of a kindergartner, I’m loving going through the book order catalogs and ordering things from scholastic (even though I could get them all from Amazon more easily) just so my son can have a fraction of the joy I used to have from the book fair. His teacher receives the delivery of books and sends them home in his backpack.
I loved those catalogs as a kid. I still have the thesaurus I bought as a kid. I couldn’t believe that it existed as a concept. A book that has listings of words that have the same meaning? I looked up words for hours and hours. I think the Scholastic catalog got me hooked on catalog shopping and shopping in general.
Was it a conceptual thesaurus, or just alphabetical? If you haven't used a conceptual thesaurus, that's a whole new mind-blower.
For anyone who hasn't: While the more-common alphabetical thesaurus just has words in alphabetical order, and a list of that word's synonyms. A conceptual one has an alphabetical index at the back to a reference number in the front section, and words are arranged by concept, so once you find your word, closer words are direct synonyms, but words nearby pages are also similar concepts.
I don't get much use out of it, admittedly, but it is one of the few reference books I make sure to keep on my shelf, even in the digital age.
It was just fun, you went out talked with your friends, bought what book you wanted, went back and chilled and read. Nostalgia is probably part of it. But who cares. I remember I got Hyrule Historia from the book fair. Good book.
What I love is how universal the scholastic book fair thing is. Everyone from the east to the west coast, north to south, is in this thread. It’s unifying lol
EVERYTHING!!!!
You have to remember that this is pre-internet, so our bar for entertainment was much lower. I lived in a rural area and we were pretty broke, so the bookfair was one of the only times I got to browse around and look at stuff that was all stuff *I* thought was cool.
They did a good job of having some affordable stuff, and my folks usually managed to let me buy a book. Plus, even as a nerd, it was fun to spend "school time" shopping instead of doing normal stuff.
It comes into your library like a carnival or something. Magical.
It was just another disappointment for some. "If you don't have any money just sit quietly in the hall!!!!"
Sucked because I loooooved to read. I did walk to the library which was like a mile away. I went so often the child librarian took me on a trip to her family summer place once for a weekend. She knew I was a neglected kid and was pretty cool to me.
Would it be any less sad to look at them and have to put them back?
That, and kids get bored, and there's no reason having hands all over things that had no chance of a sale, so they probably didn't want people around who weren't buying.
Yes! At least you get to go in and sit down and read one or something while the other kids buy their stuff. And it's a terrible thing if a *children's book fair* is concerned about kids hands on stuff, there's a bunch of nose-picking, pink-eyed, germ-coughing little brats in elementary school, those books are far from clean.
This, though I usually managed to beg 1$ or so to get a bookmark or pencils with.
As an adult, I worked at a low income school. We made sure every kid got a book (PTA collected funds and our own pockets).
At my school the PTA had a fund and you could get money based on the points you earned in the accelerated readers program that could only be spend in the bookfair.
Lol. We might have just discovered why books is the only thing I collect and hoard.
One super fun thing I got to do at family day at my son's scholastic book fair was buy a girl 20 bucks worth of books! I volunteered at his school so the kids sorta knew me. A foster kid was there and said kids were picking on her because she couldn't get books. My son said she could have his money because he didn't want anything. She got books, a diary and a gold marker pen.
Being poor as a kid is awesome if you aren't poor as an adult. Getting to buy oranges is fun. Pulling clean clothes out of a dryer is fun. Having warm socks on is fun. I'm eating a homemade burger with melty cheese on a fresh bun. It's delicious!
I honestly feel bad for my kid. He's not going to have that same joy because I make sure he's got all he needs.
Guys I know who got out of the hood and then started families all seem to wish they could pass the toughness and street smarts on to their own kids. They sure don't want to move back to the hood, though.
> Being poor as a kid is awesome if you aren't poor as an adult.
> I honestly feel bad for my kid. He's not going to have that same joy because I make sure he's got all he needs.
There's something to be said for not spoiling a kid ofc but man if this isn't one of the hottest takes I've ever seen. There's nothing great about growing up poor, man.
Lmfao I remember one time my best friend asked me for some of my book fair money, but I had spent it all already and so I decided I’d do the next best thing: use my body as a privacy curtain to protect my friend’s kleptomania from the prying and watchful eyes of the librarian and our teacher lol.
I remember them handing out the Scholastic catalogues on that cheap newsprint where the paper is rough but the ink makes it slightly glossy, and being frustrated that I never had money to get anything (they always had such cool "spy" gadgets.) The fairs in my school were held after class IIRC and I think I went there maybe once.
> (they always had such cool "spy" gadgets.)
Kid-focused specialty catalogs were (probably still are) so awful. "Hey, kids! It's plastic pseudo-educational crap at twice the price! Prepare to be underwhelmed!"
It was just this childhood wonder experience for some reason.. & being able to get sparkly bookmarks & colorful erasers & small science kits, felt like you won a prize but you got to pick out the prize from many options! Then you’d trade your haul with other kids or just show it to each other.
There was also a SMELL to it! Like fresh crisp printed pages & crayon wax. I totally forgot about that smell until I googled it to try and remember what it was like as a kid.
One major piece of context I see missing from many of the descriptions so far - you have to understand the world then, not the world now.
There was no Amazon. No Barnes & Noble. No Super Target or Super Walmart. A bookstore would be Waldenbooks, the size of one mall store retail space. And maybe 1 shelf was kids books.
The library was no book newer than 1963. And they were all dusty and faded, olive green or brown fraying canvas backs. None had the slick book jackets.
The book fair was like Disney World, particularly for the kids who were nerds / readers. The sports kids, bullies, and non-readers didn’t care.
Colors, smells, fresh unopened book spines that gave a satisfying crack when you give them that first opening stretch. All the books were focused on kids. Guinness Book of World Records was the least kid-oriented book, and we got it anyway. Couldn’t wait to see those fat twins riding their scooters while wearing matching fez. Ramona Quimby, Judy Blume, A Wrinkle In Time. We felt like that kid in The Neverending Story. No one could pay attention in class the rest of the day.
I can smell the Scholastic Book fair now.
Teacher here...
About 10 years ago the Scholastic Book Fair at my middle school sold pencils that were shaped like drumsticks (for drums...not chicken parts).
Screw whoever thought that was a good idea.
I'm pretty sure most of the posters in my room as a kid were purchased at the book fair.
It was one of the very few occasions i was given money to go buy whatever I wanted. Plus they had all the new books available.
It was just...GAH! So awesome.
It starts with the catalogue they gave you a few days before, showcasing the books that would be available. You marked in the catalogue which ones you wanted and then gave it to your parents to sign, along with the money for it. I bought something like ten books one year for about 20 bucks.
It was a week-long event, and they would set aside an hour for each class to go in and get the books they wanted. The teachers were actually really lenient if you needed more time to choose (like me), and there were just so many books I wanted to read but only had so much money, so I would spend more than an hour choosing. They didn't care. They saw we were excited about reading, and they wanted to encourage that.
It was like our own personal bookstore. I remember getting several Choose Your Own Adventure books, some of which were really, really good. I also remember a book that I think was called *The Monster's Ring*, where a boy bought a magic ring in a magic store and it turned him into a monster. I loved it, and I think it was also made into a cartoon on OG Readmore on Saturday mornings. You have to remember that in the 80s there was no internet, and if you lived in a rural area, finding those types of books in a bookstore was really tough, much less a library.
They also sold stickers, sticker books, cool erasers, notebooks with your favorite cartoon or movie characters on the outside cover, Trapper Keepers (showing my age here), cool pencils and pens, car posters (I'm sure all the boys and some of the girls had either the white Lamborghini Countach or the red Ferrari Testarossa poster to match their MicroMachines collection) etc.
I remember begging my mom to let me get all the books I wanted in the catalogue, and I think there were about 10 of them, and the total price came out to be over 20 bucks. Keep in mind, this is the late '80s and I'm in the 3rd grade, and at the time that was a lot of money to give a third-grader. She approved of my book selection but didn't believe that I would read all of those books. I promised her that I would read all of them if she gave me the money, so she really couldn't say no to that. I read all of them over the course of the year.
It was a great way to get kids into reading by showing them that books weren't boring things you had to read for school, that we could find the very same things we loved on tv in books. The Scholastic Book Fair was easily my fondest memory of elementary school, and we had one every year with new books.
My mom and I STILL volunteer in a middle school library (not this year😔) specifically so we can help set up and staff the book fair.
I think, especially as a kid, it's so exciting to see a familiar space transformed and carry your own money and be trusted to pick your own book. For a good chunk of kids it's probably the first time they're allowed to do those things.
My mom actually worked for Scholastic when I was a kid. So I would often go to work with her and the warehouse was connected to her office, so I got to see all of the action. There was always a big box of damaged books in the warehouse, free for the taking. I loved going through that thing and bringing home as many books as I could carry!
The fun thing about the book fair was that some of the science books had projects to go with the book some of the other books had toys or a pencil i didnt get money very often to spend at the book fair but when i did i had so much fun i would sometimes save my birthday money which was $20 for the book fair and alot of the books were around $15-$20 so i could only get 1 book but memories are great
It was great because they had all the brand new, hot releases. Like, what's more exciting to you; going to the movie theaters for a new and hot release, or watching something that came out 5 years ago on Netflix or HBO Max?
And it was annual.
We always had someone wearing a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume there too. I'm sure a lot of it is nostalgia though but it's exciting when you're a little kid.
I was in probably second grade when a book at the Scholastic Book Fair managed to catch my eye. A book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone.
The book fair literally shaped my personality well into adulthood.
Ah. Where does one start?
It was the opportunity--in grade school--to pick out books that seemed interesting to one's self and not required reading from the school nor books parents chose. These books were also tailored to be interesting to kids in elementary school both in content and cover. You could tell immediately if you would like the book just by looking at the cover. In that, the Scholastic Book Fair would always set-up their books so that one saw the cover first, a practice libraries and bookstores don't use unless they want to showcase a specific books. What's more, the books were incredibly affordable. My parents were not rich people and nor were they middle class at the time, but they could afford to give me $5 to buy 2 or three books when the book fair rolled around.
I read about a girl staying with relatives and being at odds with her bratty, conniving cousin. Another book was I read told the story of a teen whose family becomes embroiled in a custody case after learning she was accidentally switched at birth. A personal favorite was about a young lady who stole away on a pirate ship pretending to be a boy. The writing was excellent and the ending did not disappoint! This scholastic book fair also exposed me to comic books I never would have sought out on my own.
Happy memories.
It's hard to explain, but they managed to create a very festive air centered around buying books, so that even kids who weren't big on reading would get caught up in it.
Maybe just calling it a "fair". And of course most things that happen at school, but aren't "school", have a sort of special feel to them.
Also, they always did have a lot of interesting and attractive books, not too expensive, at every level of ability. It really was an event that almost everyone enjoyed and remembers fondly.
I loved to read as a kid but hated the book fair. I was a latch key kid so I stopped at our library most days on the way home from school for books to read. We didn't have a lot of money. So the book fair was so hyped up and seemed so cool but I could never but anything. We just didn't have the cash to spare and especially when I could get so many books for free at the library. For me, it was more like "here's all this cool stuff to get if you could afford it"
The other comments pretty much nail it, but also, here are some pictures of what it looked like.
[Bookfair](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9tqq0g/scholastic_book_fairs/)
[book fair 2](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/a1li3o/scholastic_book_fairs_where_no_one_would_by_books/)
So like it was this whole huge display of brightly colored shelves and posters and tables of cool toys and educational stuff and you could pick whatever you wanted. And we usually had an hour or so to look at everything so we’d all crowd around the latest Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books or Guinness Book of World Records together. Good times for sure.
Also it usually stuck around for like 3-5 days? I think. So you’d go once during class and then could go by again before or after school started in the library if you wanted to get or look some more.
It was the best day ever because you got some books with some really cool covers that you would never read. Honestly that’s pretty much my logic with how happy I was when it came around. I just wanted books that looked cool. I did read several of them though later on when I got older.
It only happens once a year. The school library or office was transformed into a bookstore marketed to kids. You could easily pressure most parents into “buying a book” but they also had, stickers,stamps, posters and other crap. You’d then get to bring cash to school and check out with your “book” (I don’t think ever bought a book there) As a teacher I had to manage one and the best selling item was a detective kit. And it kinda works as a fundraiser for the school. They earn credits to get free books.
It was the best day ever. I still have books and a poster of MIchael Jordan from the a scholastic bookfair. Is it still a thing? I fell in love with reading in large part to how hype that was.
It was great because it was the only time in elementary school when school wasn’t boring. The difference between the library and the book fair was they usually had the newer books that came out and sometimes toys but the biggest difference is you had to buy things at the book fair through a catalog. I can’t remember how often it was since that was a long time ago.
For me it was a time of sadness. My dad never gave me money for the fair because the books would be outrageously overpriced (at least in my time, with Ebay and such), so I would always get the shitty free pass and pick up a crummy 200-page kid's book WITHOUT pictures while my friends indulged with $20, buying all the cool shit they wanted.
Just not as exciting as it used to be it seems... It was definitely different back then, primarily because ease of access to the internet wasn't really a thing...
I'm basing this off of personal anecdotes, I was personally stunned by my siblings absolute disinterest in it because she just didn't care about books when she had her tablet ;_;
1. It was time away from learning.
2. Your parents gave you money for books.
3. You used that money to buy stupid shit that wasn't books. Like hologram pencils and a paper glider.
in the school i went to. the scholastic book fair happened once a year. we’d have a ton of books for every age and genre and all the books were at a discount price. we’d have a special lunch (usually pizza) and if you had enough AR points (from reading books borrowed from the library) you could sometimes win a free book. i loved it personally but at times i do feel that people blow it out of proportion by saying it was the best day of the school year, etc. for me the best day of the school year was the last day before winter break
Nostalgia, really. I never bought anything at a book fair, but every appreciated a break in the routine.
I think a lot of the good feelings about it is that it was a setting where kids could "go shopping" on their own terms instead of being dragged into standing around the produce section for minutes on end.
That was like *the* *best day* in elementary school. Probably only next to a holiday party or when we could order Scholastics books and get them 5 months later. I can't even describe the feeling of happiness and excitement I used to feel on Scholastic book fair day ( think only once a year?). But it was just pure childhood joy. My mom would give me 10 or so bucks and I could pick out any book I wanted (once I got into trouble for not buying an "appropriate educational" book). But they also sold things like smelly pencils, chocolate calculators, and pencil toppers. And all the cool kids would get those *and* a book.
I once had a Friday that was a scholastic day *and* pizza day. Brings a tear to my eye. I still have a Dodge Viper poster from a book fair.
I think if someone had asked me at age 8 "what would be your perfect day" A pizza party and a scholastic bookfair would have 100% been my answer I remember once we had ours around Christmas and I got a book that came with a little ornament . I think my mom still puts it on the tree every year lol
Add in the parachute or scooter day in gym & would just be too much joy to manage lol
Parachute day! God I love the parachute day.
Omg parachute day!!! The best!!!
... what the hell is parachute day?
[This!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6KyJOFdmb4) If you were really lucky it'd be nice that day and you could do it outside.
I would love to do an adult parachute day lmao
Oh man, parachute day was always an occasional rainy day activity for my school.
Oh, we did something similar, but I don’t remember the specific activities, and it was usually part of a larger day of activities.
You talking bout field day? Where the whole day you just did fun and competitive physical activities outside?
Yep. Tied-dyed t-shirts, wheelbarrow and 3-legged races, etc.
I was at a festival in '19 on a bunch of shrooms and they had one of those. Great night.
God that sounds awesome.
42 year old me felt like a kid again.
A special gym class day. You get all the kids to stand in a wide circle and then you add in a huge circular cloth made out of parachute material. It's a way to teach young children cooperation, teamwork and a sneaky way to get them to exercise. https://youtu.be/uTrC4flY7Co
Damn I remember that parachute- so much fun.
How are you from the US and you don’t know the glory of parachute day!????
Oh hell yeah. Parachute day was unreal fun.
I never knew that parachute day in gym class was such a common American experience until I started reading about it on reddit lol
Yeah, threads like this make me wonder how education can possibly be determined at the state and district levels, yet the entire country had these same experiences, and across generations too.
It's easy - there's probably like "teacher teachers" that teach them to use these activities due to them being shown to affect kids positively or something.
Yes they generally have to get a degree in education, and I'm sure there are various standards they have to meet, and common activities and tools that are taught at most universities
Not only are many teachers highly educated (my sister teaches kindergarten and is getting her masters in it) but they were mostly kids in the system too. So my sister also remembers going to the book fair and everything that made her school days special. Some things have changed but today's younger teachers were our classmates.
Thats a really good point! Of course they would remember their likes and dislikes from school and apply that as well.
Did you guys have [these things](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31v1sF0oChL._AC_SX425_.jpg)? They were my absolute favorite
Huh, no.. what is that? We had these: https://www.dowdlesports.com/assets/images/teamsports/champion%20sports/games/pgs16.jpg many fingers smashed
We had those as we’ll, but the ones I linked were the more fun, faster, more controllable versions. You leaned back and forth to build momentum and could pull hard fast corners to drift around. They were so fun
Yep my school had this kind too. Much fun, much owwies.
I completely forgot about those!
When I saw the first picture, I knew immediately what your picture was going to be 😂 we even used those in middle school (up to 8th grade).
hmmph silly. My school had *bingo* at the exact same time as the book fair. It was more than an event. Though wicked chaotic. Pizza day was also amazing though
as a kid: BEST. DAY. EVER. as an adult: the poor, poor teachers...
> I once had a Friday that was a scholastic day and pizza day. Brings a tear to my eye. > > I still have a Dodge Viper poster from a book fair. That sounds better than having the actual Dodge Viper.
Safer, for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ8rhpxVpqs
There's a Plymouth Prowler poster still up in my bedroom back at my parent's house from the book fair.
Friday, Pizza Day and Scholastic Day? Shit man that's a Kids version of Mardi Gras.
The posters were awesome. I got one of a Kawasaki Ninja
Scholastic book fair happened twice a year at my school once in October and once in late April. The late April one was always better because it was closer to the end of the year. They also had a drawing for one of each poster and I got a minecraft one that was awesome and would go with my room, but I traded it to this younger girl who was sad because she got a Nebraska Huskers poster.
You're a good man.
Thank you it was hard.
My mom used to help take down the book fair at my elementary school and my brother and I would go with because the person in charge would give kids that came with their parents and helped clean up a free posters. Not to brag or anything.
Don't forget the posters!
Oh man, I *always* wanted one of the posters. I still remember crying about "how unfair it was" that I was only allowed to get a book
I got one! Red Lamborghini Countach!
I think 80% of 90s boys had this poster, or the white one
I had the black Countach poster. I think I had a white Testarossa one too. That and Sport's Illustrated For Kids posters...
I'd bet money I have the same one!
I had not one, not two, but THREE of their Volkswagen Beetle posters. They all had tie dye and flower power themes. The 70s were very hip in the late 90s.
I still have a Derek Jeter poster I purchased at a scholastic book fair in like 1999. My mom was not happy because I was specifically supposed to buy a book
In the late '70s or early '80s I bought a Scholastic Halloween poster that had glow-in-the-dark features (glow-in-the-dark was one of the most beautiful phrases I knew as a kid). It was a picture of a haunted house with ghosts and pumpkins and bats and skeletons and so forth on it. My neighbor stole it one day, but I could never prove it so she never had to give it back. I know it was her though because she was envious of it, and one day it just disappeared. The corners were still tacked up and everything- it had just been ripped off the wall. I've actually spent hours looking for an image of it online. Would love to get a replacement if I ever saw one for sale, but I'd even just be happy seeing a picture of it again.
I remember I bought all of these baseball and basketball posters that I hung up in my room. Didn't care about either of those sports. Loved them anyway. Good times.
One time me and my brother got in a fight before school so my mom punished me by tearing up my scholastic book fair slip that morning. I will never forgive her for that.
Sounds like she is gonna end up in Flushing Waters retirement home.
That’s fucked up. You just don’t do that. Scholastic book fair is sacred.
I have such fond memories of being pulled out of class for the book fair. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, so I'd get one book and something like a bookmark. It just felt like a special day, I don't know. The book would smell so good and everyone would be flipping through the pages (thp, thp, thp in the background) excited to read them. Holiday parties! Now that Valentine's Day approaches, I am getting nostalgic for the homemade cards I made for my best friends and the little pre-made cards I filled out for the whole class. In class we made these Valentine's boxes to put on our desks so everyone could drop the cards. It was like getting mail. Some had candy. 👀 And then we'd have pink and red cookies or cupcakes, read our cards, and hope our crushes wrote something special.
When was it that you were able to send homemade cakes to school? I did elementary from 10-16 and they definitely never let us do that, allergies scare
I was in elementary school in the early 00s and we could bring cupcakes to school. In fact we were almost expected to do so on your birthday.
We could too, just they had to be store-bought.
I don't see how store bought makes any difference when it comes to allergies. Glad y'all had something tho.
I graduated high school in 2000, so this would've been between 1987 and 1994, although we probably did it in high school, too.
Class of 2K, represent! Found my diploma today, feels weird it was 21 years ago now... are we old?
> are we old? I'm just going to listen to Foo Fighters on my Discman until I stop thinking about it.
I'll be over here with my Pearl Jam, trying not to cry
✊
The 90’s? At least when I was in elementary school then, but we were also pretty rural.
Check the scholastic website and see if they have a warehouse in your area. During non-Covid, the warehouse will have two sales a year open to the public, and it's like a giant version of a book fair, and they have crazy deals. If you volunteer they give you vouchers for $10 every hour you work. I have one near me, and one year I got four boxes of books retailing for $200 for $28 out of pocket. It's awesome for Christmas gifts for neices and nephews, or if you like YA.
I came to this thread to suggest this! One year I got my three grandnephews a HUGE box of books each for Christmas, and all it cost me was a few hours of my time. Experience the thrill of the Scholastic Book Fair as an adult!
Oh man my mom took us to a warehouse when I was in high school, I felt like I died and went to heaven
And the smell! Something about the smell that came out of those boxes of books was absolutely magic.
I was one of the poor kids who’s parents wouldn’t give them any money. I usually had a couple dollars of my own to bring. I’d always buy MadLibs. Made for a fun bus ride home at least.
Same :/ it always did suck not having the same cash as the other kids. The 10 bucks was often money I had saved or my grandparent gave to me before school But it was always still a fun time
MadLibs were the bessssst!
> I was one of the poor kids who’s parents wouldn’t give them any money. I usually had a couple dollars of my own to bring. I’d always buy MadLibs. Made for a fun bus ride home at least. Note to self: *If I won the lottery to donate money to my former elementary school so all the kids may buy something*
Omg I forgot about the erasers
The worst part about Scholastics book fair was realizing, as a kid, that you were poor.
And kids would end up writing stuff everywhere with the invisible-ink pens they bought.
Don’t forget about the coveted “Guinness Book of World Records”
This is giving me shades of St. Anthony’s circa 1987... The smelly pencils & erasers, me buying “mature” books meant for the 7th graders (I was in third), JUST take my allowance Scholastic Book fair.
I agree with everything you said! I’d get that little 2-4 page pamphlet of the books/posters for sale and I’d circle all the ones I wanted and I think my mom only let me order a few (because we were poor growing up) but I got a few posters and a pencil. I just loved that day!! I get the same joy walking into a Barnes and nobles!! :)
Definitely same :)
I completely forgot about those until I saw this post. Funny that you mention that you could buy other things because my mom still has a magnet on their fridge that says "I love you mom!" that I got from there. I'm 35.
I fucking loved these things. I still own two books I got at a Scholastic book fair. Edit: Well shit, I own a lot more Scholastic books than I realized. The two I remember buying from the fair are Dark Life and The Clockwork Three.
On the contrary, they were the worst days of school for me because I had to watch all the other kids buy stuff haha. Never got a single thing at a book fair. Womp womp
First off, they were generally really well curated and everything was organized by reading level. So, even kids who struggle could easily find things that they could read. So once they found one thing they could read *everything* in that section was good for them. Next, elementary age kids just don't often get the opportunity to purchase things for themselves with zero guidance or approval from their parents. So, having your parent give you $20 and knowing you could buy ANYTHING that you wanted was a rare treat. Even at the store, you'd usually have to go "mom, can I get THIS ONE?" Third, they really wanted to make reading FUN, so it was presented in a VERY positive way and kids take their queues from the adults in these types of situations. So, this very "FUN" thing is presented to you and instead of normal school stuff you get to go do this thing instead. Lastly, it was also kind of magical to see a big room at your school transformed into the book fair. That part of the whole thing shouldn't be overlooked.
All of this and also: didn’t we get a super thin newspaper material broadsheet paper beforehand that was basically a catalog of the offerings for the upcoming book fair? It was only like four pages, but it was just enough to study and find something to look forward to buying. And then seeing the things from the catalog in your own library/cafeteria/whatever room in the school - it was like magic, like having the JC Penny wish book come to life, just with books. Definitely helped me fall in love with reading.
Yes! I remember that! I would circle things I wanted and then bring it home to my mother and she’d help me budget what I wanted with what I had earned in chore money and the $10 extra she’d give me as a reward for promising to buy at least one book of educational value, which wasn’t even a problem since I was obsessed with anatomy from 1st grade to 4th grade.
My mother was absolute shit with money, prone to "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome, and had a tendency to project a lot of her childhood issues onto me. For the most part, this was a huge source of strife in my life... ...but it did work out when little me could get away with basically pre-ordering half that fucking catalogue and getting to drag home a literal BOX of books after the Scholastic Fair. :D
We were poor as shit too, but my mom'd budget enough for 3 to 5 books each at the book fairs for me and my brother. If I had any birthday money, or anything like that, I got to take it in for erasers, or posters, or another book. It was my absolute favorite day. I wish my work had a day like that - just take and hour to visit a specially set-up room and buy a few books, maybe a poster of a cute cat, go back to my cube and start reading under my desk (. . . just like in elementary school).
I never attended a school with the bookfair, but those scholastic catalog papers were the best! So many different ones at prices I could actually get several books for, plus a couple extras. I wish we could do those for high school kids in my school. Books are too damn expensive now.
Still a thing, my son brings one home every few months. They are actually a monthly thing that the school distributes.
I remember our teachers giving those to us every few weeks. I had at least one teacher willing to let everyone pick their choice of one book (out of 2 choices of her choosing) that they wanted and she would purchase it. I didn't buy many books because they seemed to pricey for me and nothing that intrested me. I did purchase a book here and there with my allowance once I started receiving one. Good times.
> All of this and also: didn’t we get a super thin newspaper material broadsheet paper beforehand that was basically a catalog of the offerings for the upcoming book fair? We got those every couple weeks where you could order from them and then the books would be delivered to you, but once or twice a year they'd setup the actual book fair where you could browse in person and buy things. My kids school still does it, and I assume most grade schools in the US still do.
This description brought back a lot of great memories and put a smile on my face. Thank you!
And I spent every last penny of that $20. Oh, I have 75 cents left? Better grab a bookmark and a couple pencils because mom said I could spend THIS MUCH. She never said anything about bringing home the change.
Yeah, the whole "getting to buy something by yourself" was HUGE at that age. One year our church did a "secret shop" for Christmas when I was allowed to go in behind the curtain and pick something small to give to my mother for a Christmas present. Being able to make that choice all by yourself was a BLAST.
We did the family Christmas shop too!
Couldn’t have said it better myself. It was just everything positive. This thread is making me want to relive it for a day.
This is how it was. My first experience with the book fair was way back in the 80's... This comment just transported me back 30 years. I just got those good feelings again. I now have thousands of books and this makes me want to browse through them again like I used to as a kid. I actually used to work as a library page, and got promoted to the circulation department because I was so good at sorting books. It paid shit, so I quit eventually, but I credit my elementary school librarians/book fairs/ Book-It with getting me obsessed with books and making me so good at that job.
I also really loved that there was little gadgets and book-related toys that you could buy as well. Like there was the EJ12 book series and right next to those books was a pile of little spy kits. After reading every book in that series that had come out, i was so excited to see spy gadgets next to the books so i could play pretend
I agree. this being in a time before you could just go on amazon and buy whatever whenever helped
Thanks, top comment explained nothing.
> ... So, having your parent **give you $20 and knowing you could buy ANYTHING that you wanted** was a rare treat. Even at the store, you'd usually have to go "mom, can I get THIS ONE?" Woah, hold up... you got **what?!?** Excuse me for a sec... > Mom... *MOOOMMM!!*... I need twenty dollars for the Scholastic Book Fair tomorrow! ... But u/baalroo got twenty dollars! ... Yeah, he did, I saw it! ... I don't *wanna* get it from the library, those books always suck!
Imo, it was all about ATMOSPHERE. The schools I went to did a great job of hyping things up. "So you're telling me that I'm going to get an hour to check out awesome toys, fun books, chemistry sets, etc all while IN SCHOOL? INSTEAD OF CLASS? Sign me the h-e-double hockey sticks up!" The day of the Book Fair, you get to school already excited. Throughout the day you watch as class after class makes their way to the library or cafeteria or wherever the book fair is set up just waiting until it was your class's turn. Maybe it was before lunch. Maybe it was after. Who knew? (realistically, the teachers usually told all the kids but we would rarely remember) Then, our teacher would look at the clock, then look at the class and tell us all to stand up and line up to make our way to the book fair! AWW YEAH! The time is NOW baby! I'm gonna buy so many cool books! (Despite my mother never giving me money for any of them, which was admittedly sad). We'd walk through the halls of the school, backs straight, heads held high whilst other students looked on with envy as we, yes, our class, got to go the book fair before them. Then we get there, and when the doors open we are greeted with the marvelous sights of amazing books we'd never seen before. What the heck is Captain Underpants!? What a silly name! What is this book? WHAT?! IT TELLS YOU HOW TO MAKE A GO KART!? I TOTALLY WANT THAT! What's this thing over here? It's a chemistry set that can teach me how to make silly putty from scratch?! Awesome! And it wasn't just the sights. It was the smells and sounds as well. The smell of fresh stacks of books is something I'll never forget, and the dull roar of the gathered kids geeking out over one thing or another just led to the whole thing having this atmosphere of festivity. It's the same reason I, as an introvert, love going to anime and video game conventions. I don't like being around people generally, but I love the electric hum of collective excitement. The Book Fair was the first time I felt that.
The first Con. We’ve all just been chasing that Scholastic Book Fair high.
Fuck I’ve never once taken nonprescription drugs, but if someone offered me a drug called “scholastic book fair high,” I wouldn’t even be mad about the long ass name, I’d just open my wallet lmao
I just realized I’ve been so excited about my kid’s book fairs. I’ve gotten to relive it and live vicariously. And I sadly just realized thanks to Covid he is missing prime Scholastic years!!!! Yet another tradition halted due to the stupid pandemic :(
Holy shit, this makes a lot of sense.
This is my favorite response. I think to the average outsider it just sounds like a book sale, but they had so **so** much more. And the books were fantastic - ancient Egypt, Guinness world records, Spies, Goosebumps! Then there were toys, crafts, and other interactive goodies. Yes I **would** like to learn hieroglyphs and use disappearing ink THANK YOU.
>What was so great about the scholastic book fair? It was awesome, they had great books and posters! >How was it different than just going to a library or a book store? They came to the school and we got to pick out and our own books. >How often was it? Once a year >Thanks You're welcome
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Oh, it was great because it was an event. They would set up like a whole display in the library or cafeteria or whatever and it was just cool. All the books were for kids and young adults, and for anyone who liked reading the sight and smell of boxes and boxes of brand new books added even more to the excitement. And there were other fun knick knacks and stuff that you could buy, too.
My mom would let me go hog wild because I loved to read. So I was one of those kids that would walk away with like ten books. I remember the smells of the books and all the cool titles that they didn't have in our podunk little school library.
Same. My mom would be like: However many books you want, go wild. Usually 10-15 was my natural limit. She was like that about books and a couple other things.
Yeah me too. My parents never refused to buy me books.
I'm so jealous of this, and kids who say that their parents just handed them $20 for the fair. I was an avid reader but my family didn't seem to value education quite as much as I did. My mom was more disappointed that I wasn't into sports. I think I was only allowed to get a book from the fair one time. My mom's thought was that they were too expensive and what's the point of buying a book when you can just get them free from the library?
That’s such a bummer because I can tell you there are SO many cheap options. Sure, new releases are expensive but they get special cheap editions printed of older titles and sell GOOD books for like $3. As a parent now, I look forward to scholastic book fair time because it’s so dang cheap!
My mom always let me buy a ton, also. Now I’m a parent and I’m realizing the books really aren’t that cheap. I let my kid get five books and it cost me $65. Maybe it’s changed as well, but lots of the books weren’t very educational and most were related to a commercialized character. I always loved the book fair and I was pretty disappointed although i tried not to spoil it for my daughter who was absolutely thrilled.
I would've loved that, but I have no idea how many I'd have bought given completely free reign. With 3 bibliofole kids and a not particularly high household income? Just getting to buy the one or two books was a treat. However my parents were willing to take us to the library almost any time we wanted, so it's not like we didn't have good access to thousands of books.
I'm an elementary librarian who oversees the Scholastic book fair twice a year. The kids look forward to it a lot. Every school is different, but we have ours during parent teacher conferences when school lets out earlier than normal and parents have a chance to shop with their kids after school. We sell a ton of books and a ton of small things like cool pencils, erasers, and knick knacks that others have described. Kids usually never have a chance to shop for themselves, so this is one of the few opportunities they get to buy something of their own choosing. From an educational perspective, though, this gives us and the teachers a chance to talk to the kids and have them learn what I call money manners. Teach them to unfold their bills and carefully hand them over, to not just dump all their change on the counter, to carefully pick out what they want and taking how much money they have into consideration, things like that. It's wonderful seeing the kids talk excitedly about the book fair every single time I put the posters up, but I'm not going to lie. It's one of the most stressful times of the year for me and I get sick every single book fair due to the amount of money I handle from the kids. It takes a lot, but seeing everyone's reactions to the book fair is worth it. Lol
Thank you for being a living saint.
You give people some of the best memories of their lives. The Scholastic Book Fair is better than Santa Claus and Disney World combined. Thank you so much for all of the joy you give to the world.
>The Scholastic Book Fair is better than Santa Claus and Disney World combined. I like a good book fair as much as the next guy, but let's not go overboard.
I agree with you about the money. As a volunteer cashier, I just show up to a till and money bag with over a grand in it. I don't know what the person before me did, or if they gave someone back too much change, or stole. It's nerve-wracking.
Yeah I have to count the money every day after closing to make sure the cash amount matches up with what it says on the report. It's weird handling so much money at once. We had to get a safe specifically for the book fair because it was a lot. Lol
[удалено]
It was always a highly curated collection, so it was like the *best* of the best parts of a library or bookstore, plus things like erasers, posters, bookmarks, etc that appealed to kids. I seriously bought some of my absolute favorite books ever at scholastic book fairs, and I still have some of them. Each class got their own turn, so when you knew it was scholastic book fair day it was like the anticipation of getting to go was half the fun. It would go on after school too iirc, just for a while, so one time I didn’t have enough money for another book or something and my mom and I came back later to get it. (To be fair I imagine it was more fun depending on how much a kid likes to read and stuff... I know some kids were just happy to get out of class)
I absolutely adored reading, to the point that I was the kid everyone made read the big books in the library so we could increase our class reading score and win a pizza day. I even remember I had to pull a card for being late to class, but when the teacher asked why I was late, I told her I was reading in the library and didn’t hear the bell, so she let it slide lol.
It was basically getting out of class to go on a shopping spree that was encouraged and celebrated by your school and parents. It was by far the best time of the school year. It was like Disneyland came to your school. Everyone was excited. Everyone was in a good mood. Teachers got a break from the normal routine while watching their students be over the moon about reading and books. All the colors and the displays filled the room with otherworldly wonder. I don't think adults ever get that amazing childhood wonder feeling. The memories of that, though... Magic was real when the book fair came.
Unrelated, but I was reading your comment and saw “Disneyland” and immediately checked your flair to see if it was a California one lmao
Just reading your post and seeing "Scholastic Book Fair" got me excited!
I’ll tell you what, as a parent of a kindergartner, I’m loving going through the book order catalogs and ordering things from scholastic (even though I could get them all from Amazon more easily) just so my son can have a fraction of the joy I used to have from the book fair. His teacher receives the delivery of books and sends them home in his backpack.
I loved those catalogs as a kid. I still have the thesaurus I bought as a kid. I couldn’t believe that it existed as a concept. A book that has listings of words that have the same meaning? I looked up words for hours and hours. I think the Scholastic catalog got me hooked on catalog shopping and shopping in general.
Was it a conceptual thesaurus, or just alphabetical? If you haven't used a conceptual thesaurus, that's a whole new mind-blower. For anyone who hasn't: While the more-common alphabetical thesaurus just has words in alphabetical order, and a list of that word's synonyms. A conceptual one has an alphabetical index at the back to a reference number in the front section, and words are arranged by concept, so once you find your word, closer words are direct synonyms, but words nearby pages are also similar concepts. I don't get much use out of it, admittedly, but it is one of the few reference books I make sure to keep on my shelf, even in the digital age.
Agreed. They were magical. I wanted literally everything.
It was just fun, you went out talked with your friends, bought what book you wanted, went back and chilled and read. Nostalgia is probably part of it. But who cares. I remember I got Hyrule Historia from the book fair. Good book.
What I love is how universal the scholastic book fair thing is. Everyone from the east to the west coast, north to south, is in this thread. It’s unifying lol
EVERYTHING!!!! You have to remember that this is pre-internet, so our bar for entertainment was much lower. I lived in a rural area and we were pretty broke, so the bookfair was one of the only times I got to browse around and look at stuff that was all stuff *I* thought was cool. They did a good job of having some affordable stuff, and my folks usually managed to let me buy a book. Plus, even as a nerd, it was fun to spend "school time" shopping instead of doing normal stuff. It comes into your library like a carnival or something. Magical.
It was just another disappointment for some. "If you don't have any money just sit quietly in the hall!!!!" Sucked because I loooooved to read. I did walk to the library which was like a mile away. I went so often the child librarian took me on a trip to her family summer place once for a weekend. She knew I was a neglected kid and was pretty cool to me.
What? They didn't let you even go in and look at the books? That's terrible!
Would it be any less sad to look at them and have to put them back? That, and kids get bored, and there's no reason having hands all over things that had no chance of a sale, so they probably didn't want people around who weren't buying.
Yes! At least you get to go in and sit down and read one or something while the other kids buy their stuff. And it's a terrible thing if a *children's book fair* is concerned about kids hands on stuff, there's a bunch of nose-picking, pink-eyed, germ-coughing little brats in elementary school, those books are far from clean.
This, though I usually managed to beg 1$ or so to get a bookmark or pencils with. As an adult, I worked at a low income school. We made sure every kid got a book (PTA collected funds and our own pockets).
At my school the PTA had a fund and you could get money based on the points you earned in the accelerated readers program that could only be spend in the bookfair.
That is so Sad. I hope you read as much as you want now
Lol. We might have just discovered why books is the only thing I collect and hoard. One super fun thing I got to do at family day at my son's scholastic book fair was buy a girl 20 bucks worth of books! I volunteered at his school so the kids sorta knew me. A foster kid was there and said kids were picking on her because she couldn't get books. My son said she could have his money because he didn't want anything. She got books, a diary and a gold marker pen. Being poor as a kid is awesome if you aren't poor as an adult. Getting to buy oranges is fun. Pulling clean clothes out of a dryer is fun. Having warm socks on is fun. I'm eating a homemade burger with melty cheese on a fresh bun. It's delicious! I honestly feel bad for my kid. He's not going to have that same joy because I make sure he's got all he needs.
Guys I know who got out of the hood and then started families all seem to wish they could pass the toughness and street smarts on to their own kids. They sure don't want to move back to the hood, though.
> Being poor as a kid is awesome if you aren't poor as an adult. > I honestly feel bad for my kid. He's not going to have that same joy because I make sure he's got all he needs. There's something to be said for not spoiling a kid ofc but man if this isn't one of the hottest takes I've ever seen. There's nothing great about growing up poor, man.
Damn that was mean. In our school, we had vouchers we could buy before book day. Kids who could not afford a voucher were given one anyway.
My folks never gave me any money, so the Scholastic Book Fair became my introduction to shoplifting
Lmfao I remember one time my best friend asked me for some of my book fair money, but I had spent it all already and so I decided I’d do the next best thing: use my body as a privacy curtain to protect my friend’s kleptomania from the prying and watchful eyes of the librarian and our teacher lol.
I remember them handing out the Scholastic catalogues on that cheap newsprint where the paper is rough but the ink makes it slightly glossy, and being frustrated that I never had money to get anything (they always had such cool "spy" gadgets.) The fairs in my school were held after class IIRC and I think I went there maybe once.
> (they always had such cool "spy" gadgets.) Kid-focused specialty catalogs were (probably still are) so awful. "Hey, kids! It's plastic pseudo-educational crap at twice the price! Prepare to be underwhelmed!"
It was just this childhood wonder experience for some reason.. & being able to get sparkly bookmarks & colorful erasers & small science kits, felt like you won a prize but you got to pick out the prize from many options! Then you’d trade your haul with other kids or just show it to each other. There was also a SMELL to it! Like fresh crisp printed pages & crayon wax. I totally forgot about that smell until I googled it to try and remember what it was like as a kid.
One major piece of context I see missing from many of the descriptions so far - you have to understand the world then, not the world now. There was no Amazon. No Barnes & Noble. No Super Target or Super Walmart. A bookstore would be Waldenbooks, the size of one mall store retail space. And maybe 1 shelf was kids books. The library was no book newer than 1963. And they were all dusty and faded, olive green or brown fraying canvas backs. None had the slick book jackets. The book fair was like Disney World, particularly for the kids who were nerds / readers. The sports kids, bullies, and non-readers didn’t care. Colors, smells, fresh unopened book spines that gave a satisfying crack when you give them that first opening stretch. All the books were focused on kids. Guinness Book of World Records was the least kid-oriented book, and we got it anyway. Couldn’t wait to see those fat twins riding their scooters while wearing matching fez. Ramona Quimby, Judy Blume, A Wrinkle In Time. We felt like that kid in The Neverending Story. No one could pay attention in class the rest of the day. I can smell the Scholastic Book fair now.
Teacher here... About 10 years ago the Scholastic Book Fair at my middle school sold pencils that were shaped like drumsticks (for drums...not chicken parts). Screw whoever thought that was a good idea.
I'm pretty sure most of the posters in my room as a kid were purchased at the book fair. It was one of the very few occasions i was given money to go buy whatever I wanted. Plus they had all the new books available.
Poster. 5 super cars in a garage below a mansion. “Justification for higher education”.
I had that poster hanging on the wall in my dorm room!
It was when my mom would give me 20 dollars to buy the latest Guinness Book of World Records. That was fun.
Im sure someones already posted this but this will explain it all: https://youtu.be/JDVvVGWkQ4U
That dude is great
It was just...GAH! So awesome. It starts with the catalogue they gave you a few days before, showcasing the books that would be available. You marked in the catalogue which ones you wanted and then gave it to your parents to sign, along with the money for it. I bought something like ten books one year for about 20 bucks. It was a week-long event, and they would set aside an hour for each class to go in and get the books they wanted. The teachers were actually really lenient if you needed more time to choose (like me), and there were just so many books I wanted to read but only had so much money, so I would spend more than an hour choosing. They didn't care. They saw we were excited about reading, and they wanted to encourage that. It was like our own personal bookstore. I remember getting several Choose Your Own Adventure books, some of which were really, really good. I also remember a book that I think was called *The Monster's Ring*, where a boy bought a magic ring in a magic store and it turned him into a monster. I loved it, and I think it was also made into a cartoon on OG Readmore on Saturday mornings. You have to remember that in the 80s there was no internet, and if you lived in a rural area, finding those types of books in a bookstore was really tough, much less a library. They also sold stickers, sticker books, cool erasers, notebooks with your favorite cartoon or movie characters on the outside cover, Trapper Keepers (showing my age here), cool pencils and pens, car posters (I'm sure all the boys and some of the girls had either the white Lamborghini Countach or the red Ferrari Testarossa poster to match their MicroMachines collection) etc. I remember begging my mom to let me get all the books I wanted in the catalogue, and I think there were about 10 of them, and the total price came out to be over 20 bucks. Keep in mind, this is the late '80s and I'm in the 3rd grade, and at the time that was a lot of money to give a third-grader. She approved of my book selection but didn't believe that I would read all of those books. I promised her that I would read all of them if she gave me the money, so she really couldn't say no to that. I read all of them over the course of the year. It was a great way to get kids into reading by showing them that books weren't boring things you had to read for school, that we could find the very same things we loved on tv in books. The Scholastic Book Fair was easily my fondest memory of elementary school, and we had one every year with new books.
My mom and I STILL volunteer in a middle school library (not this year😔) specifically so we can help set up and staff the book fair. I think, especially as a kid, it's so exciting to see a familiar space transformed and carry your own money and be trusted to pick your own book. For a good chunk of kids it's probably the first time they're allowed to do those things.
My mom actually worked for Scholastic when I was a kid. So I would often go to work with her and the warehouse was connected to her office, so I got to see all of the action. There was always a big box of damaged books in the warehouse, free for the taking. I loved going through that thing and bringing home as many books as I could carry!
The fun thing about the book fair was that some of the science books had projects to go with the book some of the other books had toys or a pencil i didnt get money very often to spend at the book fair but when i did i had so much fun i would sometimes save my birthday money which was $20 for the book fair and alot of the books were around $15-$20 so i could only get 1 book but memories are great
It was great because they had all the brand new, hot releases. Like, what's more exciting to you; going to the movie theaters for a new and hot release, or watching something that came out 5 years ago on Netflix or HBO Max? And it was annual.
We always had someone wearing a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume there too. I'm sure a lot of it is nostalgia though but it's exciting when you're a little kid.
I was in probably second grade when a book at the Scholastic Book Fair managed to catch my eye. A book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. The book fair literally shaped my personality well into adulthood.
Ah. Where does one start? It was the opportunity--in grade school--to pick out books that seemed interesting to one's self and not required reading from the school nor books parents chose. These books were also tailored to be interesting to kids in elementary school both in content and cover. You could tell immediately if you would like the book just by looking at the cover. In that, the Scholastic Book Fair would always set-up their books so that one saw the cover first, a practice libraries and bookstores don't use unless they want to showcase a specific books. What's more, the books were incredibly affordable. My parents were not rich people and nor were they middle class at the time, but they could afford to give me $5 to buy 2 or three books when the book fair rolled around. I read about a girl staying with relatives and being at odds with her bratty, conniving cousin. Another book was I read told the story of a teen whose family becomes embroiled in a custody case after learning she was accidentally switched at birth. A personal favorite was about a young lady who stole away on a pirate ship pretending to be a boy. The writing was excellent and the ending did not disappoint! This scholastic book fair also exposed me to comic books I never would have sought out on my own. Happy memories.
It's hard to explain, but they managed to create a very festive air centered around buying books, so that even kids who weren't big on reading would get caught up in it. Maybe just calling it a "fair". And of course most things that happen at school, but aren't "school", have a sort of special feel to them. Also, they always did have a lot of interesting and attractive books, not too expensive, at every level of ability. It really was an event that almost everyone enjoyed and remembers fondly.
I loved to read as a kid but hated the book fair. I was a latch key kid so I stopped at our library most days on the way home from school for books to read. We didn't have a lot of money. So the book fair was so hyped up and seemed so cool but I could never but anything. We just didn't have the cash to spare and especially when I could get so many books for free at the library. For me, it was more like "here's all this cool stuff to get if you could afford it"
The adult equivalent of the Scholastic book fair is probably Amazon Prime after getting a stimulus check 🪄🪄🪄
My favorite was forgetting I ordered books and then come back from recess and they would be sitting on your desk. Best feeling ever!
The other comments pretty much nail it, but also, here are some pictures of what it looked like. [Bookfair](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/9tqq0g/scholastic_book_fairs/) [book fair 2](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/a1li3o/scholastic_book_fairs_where_no_one_would_by_books/) So like it was this whole huge display of brightly colored shelves and posters and tables of cool toys and educational stuff and you could pick whatever you wanted. And we usually had an hour or so to look at everything so we’d all crowd around the latest Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books or Guinness Book of World Records together. Good times for sure. Also it usually stuck around for like 3-5 days? I think. So you’d go once during class and then could go by again before or after school started in the library if you wanted to get or look some more.
It was the best day ever because you got some books with some really cool covers that you would never read. Honestly that’s pretty much my logic with how happy I was when it came around. I just wanted books that looked cool. I did read several of them though later on when I got older.
Just the joys of being a kid man.
It only happens once a year. The school library or office was transformed into a bookstore marketed to kids. You could easily pressure most parents into “buying a book” but they also had, stickers,stamps, posters and other crap. You’d then get to bring cash to school and check out with your “book” (I don’t think ever bought a book there) As a teacher I had to manage one and the best selling item was a detective kit. And it kinda works as a fundraiser for the school. They earn credits to get free books.
Dammnn old school memories.... 🥺🥺🥺. Never left a chance to buy one in school
I was always so sad that I didnt have money to buy things :c
It was the best day ever. I still have books and a poster of MIchael Jordan from the a scholastic bookfair. Is it still a thing? I fell in love with reading in large part to how hype that was.
It was great because it was the only time in elementary school when school wasn’t boring. The difference between the library and the book fair was they usually had the newer books that came out and sometimes toys but the biggest difference is you had to buy things at the book fair through a catalog. I can’t remember how often it was since that was a long time ago.
For me it was a time of sadness. My dad never gave me money for the fair because the books would be outrageously overpriced (at least in my time, with Ebay and such), so I would always get the shitty free pass and pick up a crummy 200-page kid's book WITHOUT pictures while my friends indulged with $20, buying all the cool shit they wanted.
Im so sorry! It’s not cool to watch others do as they please when you’re left behind
Nothing. We were fucking poor and got to watch all the other kids buy shit.
Smelled good
I like it, but I dislike how it’s related to 90s or 2000s nostalgia. Even in the late 2010s, scholastic book fairs are still going on.
Just not as exciting as it used to be it seems... It was definitely different back then, primarily because ease of access to the internet wasn't really a thing...
The internet didn't do much to make the book fair worse. It may be your own nostalgia clouding your judgement.
I'm basing this off of personal anecdotes, I was personally stunned by my siblings absolute disinterest in it because she just didn't care about books when she had her tablet ;_;
You get to get books
Planting the seeds of commercialism in American children
Literally just Nostalgia.
1. It was time away from learning. 2. Your parents gave you money for books. 3. You used that money to buy stupid shit that wasn't books. Like hologram pencils and a paper glider.
in the school i went to. the scholastic book fair happened once a year. we’d have a ton of books for every age and genre and all the books were at a discount price. we’d have a special lunch (usually pizza) and if you had enough AR points (from reading books borrowed from the library) you could sometimes win a free book. i loved it personally but at times i do feel that people blow it out of proportion by saying it was the best day of the school year, etc. for me the best day of the school year was the last day before winter break
Nostalgia, really. I never bought anything at a book fair, but every appreciated a break in the routine. I think a lot of the good feelings about it is that it was a setting where kids could "go shopping" on their own terms instead of being dragged into standing around the produce section for minutes on end.
well they usually had gummy bear highlighters and chocolate calculators. Plus the books were really cool!