I recently spent time partaking in one of my favorite activities....browsing books. Not just any books, children's literature. It's the season--the book fair is in town!
There's something about book fairs that always bring me back to being a kid. Do you remember that excitement of knowing that soon you'd be let loose in a room full of books with money to spend and no one to tell you what you had to buy? I remember clutching my money tightly in hand, choosing more books than I could afford than agonizing over which ones to buy before finally narrowing it down to the one or two I could get. My, how I loved the book fair at school.
Now I get to watch my students go through this same process. It's still just as much fun for me too, because I get to create a teacher wish list, and am lucky enough that I often get many books purchased for me by my students. Of course, I also get to shop. This year I managed to buy books for Russ, my nieces and my student teacher.
There is a problem with the book fair....yes, there really is. Now they offer other items. Things that kids naturally gravitate towards. Things that teachers roll their eyes at and say "Why do they put these things at the book fair!?!" Yes, it's true, I am turning into one of those people who wishes that their students didn't buy erasers that look and sound like screwdrivers, pencil toppers that don't actually sit on the pencil, pens with fuzzy head tops that just get in the way....these are the things that I end up confiscating and hiding in my drawer.
So here is my message: Books! The book fair should be about books! Don't buy toys! Buy books!
1 comment:
I LOVED book fair as a kid - they used to turn our entire library over to the fair and I looked forward to it for weeks.
I also loved those scholastic books you could order from the flyers that came into school too - delivery day was so fun.
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