I just came across this website by googling “Take Home Book Fairs” because I am looking for an alternative book fair, and I’ve been very interested to read all your comments.

For the past 8 years, I’ve been Librarian for our children’s private school, and we’ve done Scholastic fairs every fall. We do a big hoopla bells-and-whistles -theme-oriented-family-event-onsite Scholastic fair in the fall, then do a low profile Take Home Catalogue fair in the Spring, when everybody is nearly dead from fundraising fatigue. Our entire Library budget comes from our Book Fairs, so it’s not an option not to have them.

Here’s the deal. As for the Scholastic, they have always been really nice and extremely concerned and responsive to our needs as far as their distribution strategy allows. I have explained that we don’t want all the licensed characters and cartoon junk, we are trying to promote literacy with well-written books. They do have some of those, but they are growing fewer in number, honestly. Their warehouse (I’ve been to the teacher sales there), the size of many football fields, is probably 70% “trendy” titles and cartoon junk, which depresses me, but we work around it. They always attempt to send what I ask for, but the truth is their warehouse people are not trained in children’s literature, they are packing widgets. They send 8 cases, I pull everything I don’t like and store it in two of them, show the other 6. Call it censorship, call it whatever you like, but that’s the way we do it. Because it’s a small private school (200 students) I have the full charge of it, and I just take the responsiblilty and do it. Scholastic knows I do it. It is a matter of letting me sell what the parents at our school are willing to buy, and its not cartoon junk. I send very detailed evaluations each year, but they are just really not set up to handle very specific types of requests. Our rep always apologizes for the stuff we get that don’t line up with our guidelines.

The really sad thing, to me, is that Scholastic has an amazing network, great people, a massive system already in place, and nearly unlimited capacity to do great things, but in the past 8 years, they have discontinued carrying nearly every kids series considered “wholesome classics” by most librarians – Hank the Cowdog, Little House, Billy and Blaze, most Gloria Whelan, Lois Lensky, Marguerite Henry, Kjeilgaard. Even the American Girls books, that they published themselves for awhile, are no longer available. It’s always puzzled me that marketers forget they have more 2nd graders coming right behind this year’s 2nd graders that are still going to like Boxcar Children! Hello?

Anyway, we are looking for a new Take Home Book Fair for Spring because our old company folded, referred us to Imagine Nation, (we did a year with them, and they were great, but again more gift items than books), now they’ve merged into Reader’s Digest’s Books Are Fun and have suspended the Take Home option.

Back to square one. As for Fall, we’ll keep struggling on with Scholastic till something more tailored to our needs comes along. But for the stuff I won’t sell, I “just say no”.

However, the effect of licensed characters go far beyond helping kids to read. I guess parents must balance what they think is important in their kids’ lives.

I do think it’s too bad that we can’t find other ways to interest kids in great books.

TakeHomeBookFair.com

I have done dozens of book fairs in my time and THIS one is by far the easiest and they give a 40% rebate which really cant be matched. It doesn’t take any volunteers either. My school received over $3650 in cash and books!

You are absolutely right when you mentioned the other companies hold “captive audience for a gadget fair” It is converse to the “wholeness” of what a book fair should be. And I don’t like the fact that Scholastic dumps their stuff off and leaves us to do all of the work. I pull my hair out each year doing these.

I recommend TakeHomeBookFair.com to everyone if they want excellent durable, up-to-date titles . Their program is by far the newest and most beneficial I have ever seen, not to mention the easiest! It doesnt take a list of volunteers and doesn’t take up your library space.

The account manager I spoke with at Take Home Book Fair was Shane Davis. He was so helpful and was always there if I had a question. He sent 680 Take Home Book Fair catalogs to our school for free and we held the fair for 2 weeks. One other benefit is the teachers get 50% off everything. Each student took one catalog home with them and returned with their orders within our fair timeline. About 9 days after I send my orders in they UPS shipped our orders (pre-sorted in individually labeled boxes for each student)!! I couldn’t believe it. For the first time I didn’t have to sort through hundreds of books. And I didn’t have to move any tables and racks etc…

I ran the Take Home Book Fair by myself. You can get a free catalog on their website. I am staying with this company. No more pulling my hair out. I will post their website on this blog, I hope it sticks.

Thank you,

Peggy Reiling
Librarian
Washington State

* * * *

CALLING ALL PARENT VOLUNTEERS

I am very excited to have XXXXXXXXXXX host a Scholastic book fair! The book fair will take place the week of XXXXXXXXXXX and this fair will give parents the opportunity to purchase popular stories that are used in our classrooms as well as a browse through newer titles. The fair will take place during morning drop-off time (8:15-10:00AM) and evening pick-up time (5:00-7:00PM). I am looking for a few volunteers to help out with this event.

Please email me if you would like to participate. Any volunteer help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

XXXXX