When I worked at the schools I would tell the kids I was friends with the book fairy. After school I would get the poor kids the book they wanted and it would be on their desk the next day. It helped with the other kids because I couldn't afford to get books for everyone but I made sure everyone got a book. But it wasn't from me, it was from the book fairy. The schools burned be badly so I'm done. I miss the kids but nothing else.
That is so sweet. I have had a lot of parents offer to buy books for kids at the book fair so what I will usually do is check to see who has money and then kids who don't have money that it's their lucky day and they won a gift certificate.
can’t wait for this! as a kid who grew up significantly poorer than most kids in my largely upper middle class school, i definitely felt the sting when this event came around. luckily, my school had a policy where every kid got at least one book or item from the book fair up to a certain value, but it was always noticeable to me which kids took home a ton of stuff cause their parents gave them money.
Ooo that's so fortunate! I never had such a program so I never got a book ever at any point. Year after year I'm just reminded that no one had money to spend on me. 🤷🏾 At least I had other things to do anyways, and my fav series were turned into other media that was free(er) to watch (never knew Magic School came from Scholastic!)
I was the kid wandering the book fair with a calculator. And I always had to budget one item each for my siblings, since their school didn't have book fairs.
I've found that the people most likely to shriek out about 1984 are also the ones who think Fahrenheit 451 was an ideal society. Not that they've actually read either.
Fianlly someone else saying this! 1984 was one of the last books I read before I kinda fell off of reading and it's still one of my favorites. Very frustrating how RW people keep trying to co-opt it without actually knowing what the contents of the book even are.
“ Your parents had money *and wanted to give it to you* “ omg thank you for mentioning that my parents were always fine financially but I literally didn’t get birthday or Christmas presents I never bought anything besides a pencil at the book fairs. Although I will say my mom did take us to buy beanie babies every week which is a good memory I do have, god my heart is so mushed and bruised
I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. You're absolutely right - even if parents have money they don't always want to share it or spend it on their kids. Some people are very selfish
@@vintageariseni don’t think that means you. i think they mean parents who have disposable income but instead of caring for their kids they leave them alone all the time, if they are sick they don’t get adequate care “the kid could be faking”, the child in question might be growing but won’t get clothes that fit. Parents who don’t spend time with their kids. Neglect can happen across classes. you’re not neglectful bc you don’t want your kid at the book fair.
@@vintagearisen It doesn't mean you. I was actually neglected and my sister had to scrounge up money just so I could get a SINGLE book every year. That's neglect. My "father" could've stopped spending money on his games for a single month so I could get even two books instead of forcing my sister, who was also a kid, to find money for a book for me
It took a long time to accept that this happened to me. Even as an adult, I suddenly remember something else and it’s also hard to accept my siblings did not have the same experience. My older sisters hair was always done, she had a closet full of formal dresses for school dances, I was never bought one dress my entire highschool career and my mom wouldn’t do my hair so it was always frizzy and I eventually cut it off for this and other reasons. Another example is how I was too scared to ask for prescription for my glasses, I wouldn’t bother asking for stuff for projects for school because I knew it would be a burden, and of course I knew better than to ask for scholastic book fair money. One year, maybe 4th grade, a friends mom bought me a book despite her clearly thinking it odd I wasn’t given money as a kid who loved to read and who’s mom owned a successful local Montessori school. I really cherished that book because it was my only book fair book…it was a book from the Jewel Kingdom series and came with a green necklace, can’t remember the story anymore.
@@TahtahmesDiary same for me. My parents owned a business but lived out of state from me (illegal). I had one shopping trip for the entirety of high school for one pair of jeans. I wore my middle school clothes for all of high school. Barely left me enough money for a disgusting school lunch, bus fare, and a pot noodles for dinner.
My son just had a scholastic book fair at his school this week. Their book selection is abysmal. Almost no nonfiction. There are “girl books” in one section, “boy books” in another & then a sort of mix in the middle. That set up causes a bit of a problem because he loves all things cats, those types of books are always in the “girls section” and he’s embarrassed to go look. & from what I’ve noticed, they’re not really selling toys separately. They have Lego books, but then there will be some lego pieces/figures attached to the front. Or a Pokémon book with a little pokeball toy attached to the front. That kind of thing. Idk if this is typical of all of their book fairs, but I’ve noticed that at this particular school.
They only have newer books I’ve noticed. He loves Garfield, though. & omg heathcliff, I completely forgot about that show lol. I’ll have to look up the other ones
@@lindseystein9676 All the more reason they were totally wrong to put books about man's REAL best friend in the "girl books" section. It's like Peggy Hill would say, there are no "boy books" or "girl books" they're just books!
That's how it is in my son's school as well, he doesn't care where the book is, he'll grab it. He told his friend, "If you like it, get it, don't be embarrassed about the things you like to read."
This makes me really sad because I went to a private Lutheran school growing up and the book fair was the ONLY time I really was able to be exposed to different people and cultures. I am asexual, so I never got the bullying that the gay kids got but I never understood the appeal of romance novels and such and almost always wanted a science book about animals or chemistry (which were always there!). Now I am a veterinarian and pretty much point to the book fair for those books that I loved to shreds (literally).
ngl my jaw dropped at the ruby bridges one. i read that book as a kid and as a canadian who wasn’t taught about the american civil rights movement in elementary school at all it had a profound impact on me at that age
Shout out for Canada. You didn't learn about the civil rights movement in school (neither did I) because our school stop teaching anything after 1945. It's horrible to think every year, important topics like the last century of our country and all of the relevant social developments that came from it get pushed aside so we can relearn about Upper and Lower Canada and the World Wars again. It is absurd how much we ignore history in this country.
I feel so bad for kids these days growing up in certain states. When I was little, they were perfectly willing to teach about Ruby Bridges, and nobody batted an eye. Now, you can’t even mention her without having every parent in town coming for your throat. People these days are wrapping their kids in styrofoam so they don’t have to be exposed to the real world. These people are going to be so badly prepared for adulthood.
They're going after you for teaching their kids about Ruby Bridges and how bad it was for non-whites because they don't want their kids to know what they themselves are teaching the kids is evil.
Our school just hired Boosterthon to do a fun run. I looked into the company and was disgusted that they charge the school a $2k fee and then take almost 50% of the funds raised. Some of these companies forbid the school from being transparent about the amounts the company makes too.
I hate those type of school fundraisers. I refuse to participate in them. I still remember the first time my kid came home with a flyer from a fundraiser (don’t remember which company). He was so excited and said he wanted to earn enough money to get the headphones as a prize. The headphones were these cheap pieces of crap with the company’s branding on them and to get them he needed to get $1,000 in donations. Instead I bought him some new headphones and bought his teacher some things she needed for her classroom (lots of snacks for the kids, pencils, expo markers, books for her in class library, and some other stuff she said she needed). I was fortunate that we could afford it, and I figured that was a better use of around $100 than giving it to that fundraiser. It became a tradition while he was in elementary school that every year when they did the fundraiser, I’d just ask his teachers what they needed for their classrooms, and I’d buy them some supplies.
as a former kid who stole a book from the book fair, no children should feel they have to resort to stealing to be able to bring a book home as their own, and if i wasn't shamed so much for being too poor i would've never even considered theft.
Me too 😮 once. My parents were going through a legal battle over child support and basically each refused to take me to the book fair, saying the OTHER should do it. I felt like a total felon 😂 I ended up donating it to the public library because I couldn't handle the weight of my crime 😂 (at 7 years old )
My 4th/5th grade teacher was lucky enough to have a large amount of disposable income. She used that to ensure every kid in the class was able to get a book from the book fair if they wanted one.
Fun fact: I tricked someone into buying a library book at a book fair once when I was like 8. I don't know how they missed the sticker but they did and it was a perfect testimant to how many products in the book fair were literally in the library shelves! ... also if you want an example of how many "how do you do fellow kids" vibes Scholastic was giving off, look no further than the Pokemon "Official" handbook filled with so much incorrect information that hardcore pokemon fans meme on it! Yeah, go ahead little Timmy. Use your master ball on a tentacruel or fearow, its fine! Look, even Prof Oak himself says so!
The “fellow kids” aspect was certainly effective. I could’ve gotten a new story I haven’t read before. Something that got my imagination running. But no, I just had to buy the book with SpongeBob on the cover. Purely because it was SpongeBob. And it was literally just an episode I’ve already seen hundreds of times transcribed into a book. Nothing unique.
ah yea was it that red book, and then was the collectors one thats green with mew and togipi? i dont remember reading it sied to use masterball. but was expecting collectors edition if has togipi, it would have all the missingnos. i tried to write them in but ran out room ofc.
Oohhhh my word. The fact that Usborne is an MLM *blows* my mind. I grew up with *so* many Usborne books, living in the UK. As far as I know, they were always being sold in bookshops. It never would have occurred to me that this was a particularly nefarious publishing company.
i mean this as a compliment, im so obsessed with the ugly/cringe cute aesthetic with your fashion. your style isnt quite my thing, but i also love to design clothes, and it is always beautiful to see other people pushing the boundaries of fashion and i love it. everything is so unique and creative and its really encouraging to see other people being successful in their little fashion niche.
My bookmark hoarding is 100% because of the book fair. They always had bookmarks for about a dollar. As one of the poor kids, it was not too difficult for me to scrounge up change. So, most of the time I would end up with about three bookmarks.
@@metacrisis_roas someone who bought all the touristy shit mainly as gifts, postcards make more sense because even if u don't send them they weigh much less and take up less space in a suitcase.
@@ScooterinAB 😂Liking the bookmarks doesn't make you a poor kid. Some people just really like bookmarks. It was just one of the few things that poor kids like me could buy so it shaped us a little bit.
I can remember critics of the book fair in the 1980s pitching fits because the items offered at the book fair were not higher quality and more educational. People had to explain to them, like they were 5, that they wanted to keep it in a price range that kids could handle with their allowance money. Of course, there were kids that were unable to purchase books or accessories then. Increasing the prices would not help anyone. Also, it was for kids. It wasn’t meant to be incredibly serious or strictly educational. Recreational reading for twerps was the bread and butter of the SBF. I still have my Knight Rider and Gremlin audio books (books on tape). I enjoyed the crap out of them but I also loved to read. I primarily read non fiction books in the school library.
This was always the worst time in school to not have money when these book fairs came around…. Everything is so expensive! Excited that you’re doing this. These book fairs did expose me to a lot of books but being a poor kid it was hard on my parents.
I'm glad that you included neglected kids here because, as someone who grew up neglected, I've loathed these book fairs as a kid specifically because they were yet another part of childhood that I never got to experience due to my shitty parents. It was very alienating seeing all the kids with cool school supplies and being the only person in class wearing ill-fitting clothes who left empty-handed.
I get it 😪 my parents were in an ugly divorce when I was 6 and each refused to take me to the book fair or pay for any books because it was the OTHER parents responsibility. My mother hates my father more than she loves me sometimes 🤷♂️ I remember pur school made everyone go during school hours. And I found this AMAZING book about wizards. So I stole it 😭🤭 in my defense I was a first grader. Im sorry 😂❤ I loved that book though but I felt super guilty so I donated it to the local library lop
When I was in elementary school, we also had a day when the library was full of books that had been donated by a variety of publishers. We got to come down by grade and pick a book to take home. Some teachers had reading days the next day, when we could devour our new free book. It was awesome, and usually around the same time as the book fair, so everybody always got at least one book a year. My school was in a low-income area, so I wonder if that was a factor in this event existing? I have better memories of that event than the book fair, honestly.
I'm wondering if this was a RIF (Reading is Fundamental) program. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we would get books twice a year like you described. I still have a few of my favorites all these years later. I never saw a scholastic book fair until I was in high school in the late 80s. I went to a very rural, small town school.
I grew up in a Southern city. We loved the book fair because it got us excited about books & the accessories. I don't remember ever being sad about it, even though I think I only bought something 1 time.
I was a book kid, I was constantly constantly reading, but man as cool as these days were they always left me feeling bruised and left out because my family couldn’t afford to just give me money for crap. One year they did and I went feral mulling over every possible option. I decided on a naruto poster book and I actually still have some of the posters even now over a decade later
The World War II stance is insane to me. I remember reading a book in like second grade about a Jewish girl during WWII. I got from the public school library in my elementary school. Could it been the diary of Anne frank? I’m not sure. But being introduced to these topics at a young age provided me with the opportunity to become a more empathetic and understanding person at a younger age. Perhaps my little brain could handle it while others’ maybe can’t, but I remember the book having a profound impact on the way I treated others. Those ideals stand in my soul to this day.
I wonder, do they promote books about other wars or conflicts, or is the entire topic of war off-limits? If only WW II is off-limits, I see that as terrifyingly sus.
I remember reading one too, I can't remember if it was fiction or nonfiction but it was a thick little book and I think the title was "the star of david" or that was the key picture on the cover. Like why would we not be able to read something like that when we are the age group learning it?
I have a distinct traumatic memory of my school's librarian trying to sell my mom books I didn't want at the fair. I was aware even at that age we weren't the richest, and having a childish imagination, I thought my mom buying those books I didn't even want would literally make us homeless lol! The mind of a 10 year old is wild!
One if the reasons that scholastic doesn't have much competition is that the supply chainlogistics of running book fairs is insane. Tgey are basically running a new pop up store in thousands of locations every single week..
School librarian here and we had the "diverse voices" case by my request because I'm a shit stirrer. It was all the same books featuring BIPOC and characters with disabilities WE'D ALREADY HAD for the last three years, just segregated in their own case. To top it off, segregating it forced me to take an extra case and then it got shoved into the corner making the problem even more obvious!!
I would love to be interviewed as an expert on this since I am a librarian and I have run something like 20 to 25 different book fairs and I have seen truly every manner of insanity.
Make that too. I wanna hear it all. I came here in 6th grade from another country and then I became ill, and went straight to 9th grade. I only ever experienced it that year, and we thought everything was overpriced and hypercommercialized, and this is coming from someone who collected superhero stuff/dinosaur stuff. The science books I wanted were the most expensive by far. This was in the year 2000.They didn't do the fair in high school. Wonder why.
I hated the book fair because I was too poor to get anything. All the school fundraising events like that left me feeling horrible. Worst was the time where kids who sold a certain amount of items got to leave class for some special event with pizza and all the others (aka the poor kids) had to stay in class with busy work.
Librarian here! I run two book fairs a year, but I do not use Scholastic. The percentage I get back goes to pay for author visits to my school. I do try to buy books for every teacher on campus, and I am lucky to have a few parents willing to buy 1 book for each kid in the class. This is rare. I do wish I could buy a book for each kid, but my district was able to give each title 1 kid 3 free books this school year. The books were book fair quality and this makes me feel better about not being able to buy books for each kid
As someone who grew up poor, i never really felt the sting of the book fair because i had a dad with a love of reading who wanted to foster that same love in me. We couldn't afford much, but i would bring home the magazine and we'd negotiate which books i want and which ones we could afford every year and come to a compromise. I only had one rule, i had an extra little bit more than enough for whatever books we negotiated, but if i bought more than one thing that wasn't either a book or educational in some way (like an experiment kit or a new hobby to learn like cats's cradle) i would get in trouble, like being grounded. I wasn't always happy that i couldn't get toys like everyone else at the time, but i am so grateful that he worked so hard to keep me interested in books and the negotiating over a budget taught me the valuable skills of debate and negotiation. I'm really upset that scholastic and the US govt are deciding to pick and choose what stories are worth sharing, and to take representation away from diverse families. It's horrible, and i hope they change their mind, but more and more i see my country represented in star trek less by humans and more by ferengi. It's sad, as funny as that comparison sounds. I hope when my future kids are growing up, we've moved past this capitalist extremism and the "parents' rights to teach ignorance and hatred" movement
As a child that grew up poor all my life, i hated book fairs. My family never had the money, and i remember 4th grade when all the kids went, and i was forced to sit in the classroom. All the kids would go on about the stuff they got, and i vividly remember my teacher telling me "I'm really sorry you couldn't go, maybe next year :)"
Oh Scholastic Book Fairs, or as I would probably call them in hindsight, an excuse to collect scented (and sparkly) stationery, see weird posters (like that was my first exposure to 1D), and often a Wimpy Kid or Big Nate book. I wonder if that one Club Penguin book I gave away only a few years back was from one. For sure at least, it was all about highlighters.
Honestly looking back there were so many "how do you do fellow kids" vibes in book fairs. Example: The "Official" pokemon handbooks published by scholastic that were chocked full of incorrect information. 😂
I remember when the schoolastic book fair came around, other kids would try and steal my money. Ignore the fact that I was one of the poorest kids and they already had money from their parents. But I was able to get a book or pen when I could. I still felt upset that I had no money to get the good stuff.
My school didn’t have physical fairs, just what was called the book club. We’d get the catalogue and an order sheet to take home. Everything was bought through the library and it was pretty discrete. You didn’t know what anyone else was doing unless they told you. I think I prefer that since it avoided people being singled out.
I worked for my university library and had to work the book fair. The amount of kids who handed me blank checks and $100 bills was wild. I could have walked away with 1000s of dollar if I was worse human. As I kid who never had money for the book fair. It was triggering and weird.
Scholastic book fairs were such a bummer for me as a kid, so of course when my kid hit kindergarten and had her first one I went ALL OUT. Very happy to learn that our little school just puts the books quietly into their bags and they come straight home, no public displays, no book fairs, no sending kids with money. And so I stopped buying scholastic books because the selection and the quality suuuuuucks. 😂
Thank you for this great WTF Scholastic analysis! And especially for bringing more attention to the role librarians are playing in this assault on our rights to read. They are on the front lines more than most educators and advocates when it comes to these bans.
My local school district just had a book fair. Instead of bringing in scholastic, they teamed up with a local used bookstore and had books for as little as 50¢.
I loved the book fair. Probably because my parents were like yes reading is an excellent hobby and you should embrace it. My daughter's school says they welcome everyone but we will see when she has her 1st book fair I suppose.
Great video as always, Savy! I still find it hard to believe that I didn't become a LGBTQ POC by osmosis because that must be what causes that. It's the only way I can think some conservatives would justify banning books about objective reality. #GayByOsmosis
The only time I got to buy books as a kid was when my library would get rid of their old books and they had a policy where you could stuff as many books as you could in a plastic grocery bag and it was $2 per bag
That sounds actually amazing! My school never did that, but I did have quite a few teachers who, when they had books they wanted to get rid of, would see if i wanted to be its second home since i was usually the big reader in my class
Mine did that once. I got eye of the world at 10 for $1. I've still got it on the shelf with a couple other school library books that I found after high-school. I've been terrified to return those, the fine must be through the roof after a decade.
Just gave my son money to blow on the book fair this week. I grew up in 80s/90s and Loved Goosebumps books! My parents couldn't afford to give me money for it when I was a kid and now I'm living vicariously through my kid.
My big discovery at the book fairs in the UK was Animorphs, and you'd better believe I had strong feelings about the Iraq war after growing up reading that
The last of those books were published in May 2001 and I love that the author stood by the ending to say “War is hell and it doesn’t end with a neat bow or with clear heroes” That message couldn’t have come at a better time in history.
My very first job was with Scholastics, and it was a horrible experience. It wasn't even the teacher Karens being rude as heck calling in their class book orders, it was the company itself. New hires couldn't adjust their schedule/weren't allowed to adjust their schedule for a period of time, several months. I was attending community college, and a class I was taking would end at around 4:45 and I had to be there at 5, and it was physically impossible to drive from the college to work, park, get my headset on, and be on the floor ready to take calls. I begged my managers, I showed them my schedule, I tried so hard, I did everything I could short of dropping my college class to get there. They refused to change/allocate me even 10 minutes because of my college class. I had to quit to keep going to school, and it was so depressing, that my first job with an academic friendly bent like Scholastic would make me drop out of a class than give me 10 minutes.
I think my fondest memory of the book fair, even as a poor kid, was when a teacher bought me my own copy of a book that I was so excited at the idea of reading. My teacher had us write down on scrap paper what book should be added to the classroom library if we found it intriguing enough for a class read out loud and I wrote down the one I very much wanted to read. I remember watching the book trailer and getting excited and just talking about the book even though there was no way I could actually buy it and the fair wasn't even at school yet. I get way too emotional thinking how much that book means to me and that it was my teacher that got it for me overall (I would get overly happy getting a 50 cent bookmark, imagine how happy a dream book made me). Little me made my friends read the book to understand my excitment and then we made up playground games of the series because we could I still have the original copy that was given to me in all its beat up glory. Serafina and the Black Cloak and it's non existent fanbase were pretty much my childhood and I don't know how I would have gotten my hands on it when I did if it weren't for that teacher. (Thanks to any teacher that bought kids books from the fair. At some point it made them really really happy. It sucks that it really depends on income if a kid can get the book they want to read)
I did not grow up in a home of means, my grandpa was very upset with the idea that I would not have any further education beyond public. He would go out of his way and reach into his pocket to give me money for the book fair every year because he wanted me to expand my horizons, I didn't understand it at the time but I later learned that this often meant he would just stick to PB&j and leftovers for the following 2 weeks until his benefit check for the following month. I have very fond memories of my book fairs, but it is tainted with the problematic history and current trajectory of the scholastic book now. That said it was always awesome to be able to get everything I wanted, something even the rich kids my school could not say.
I was the Scholastic Book Fair chairperson for 3 years (after volunteering as a helper for 2 years) in 2013-2018 in a low income neighborhood and the school would get around half of the money made to go toward book for the school (if we bought books we got more money, or if we wanted money it would be more like 30%) and one year I refused to put out the junk and we actually sold more books (imagine that! take out the over priced crap and you sell more literature) and then another year I got every student in the school to fill out their Wish Card, and instead of sending it home with them (talk about pleading for the parents to pay up after letting the child actually look around and pick out a book before writing it down and taking that home).. I had them put it into a drawing. Then I had all the teachers nominate any students in their classes they knew wouldn't be sent with money to buy anything and I made it so that those students won. It ended up being a ton of work to not only get those names but also find their ticket and get them the book they wanted. The only rule I made was the book they wrote couldn't contain a toy. Which meant that every student got a book that year that usually didn't get one and they were announced over the intercom as having won. That was the last year my son was in elementary school and I wanted to make sure those students that didn't usually get books got at least one. :) I felt very accomplished and absolutely loved being able to volunteer so much time to doing the book fairs. :)
I always loved the book fair. I know youre here to make me sad about it, but it was a wonderful time of year for me. I couldnt always get anything, but I'd save for months just to get one or two new books, and my mom would often have a few dollars she could give to me, my sister, and my brother. We were very poor, so entertainment that didn't end up in one of us needing stitches was often hard to come by.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSWell, glad to hear that. I do absolutely feel like they were not the best way to handle things, but they were what we had. I would likely never been introduced to Animorphs without them, which continues to be my absolute favorite book series of all time. Some things need to be changed, especially Scholastic removing books to suit bigotry, but we do need something like this to get new books to kids who might otherwise never find them.
I remember feeling awkward about these in school.. They always put them in the school library and I could not check out books. It was frustrating. It felt strange to have a traveling book store at school. Do they still have these?!
@@raydgreenwald7788 I never quite understood how it was appropriate to bring retail business into schools on the school’s time…. Though I despised school fundraisers with prizes for students who sold the most of whatever it was that year. The kids with rich parents got all kinds of rewards for selling magazines, chocolates, or fruits for school fundraising because they just handed their booklet to their parents to take to work. It was so distracting and socially a nightmare. I know schools need money but…. … using children as sales agents seems exploitative. (Edited 11/10/23 for clarity)
I remember getting a $20 bill for the fair and wanting to buy my elementary hyper fixation (read crush to an undiagnosed 5 to 9 year old) a spy kit and whose idea was foiled by my 3rd grade teacher. I mainly browsed. We all wanted the latest hp book which was always years above our reading level.
I hated book fair day. We only ever had the money for me to get a new bookmark and maybe a pencil. I even had a friends mom give us money once, but it wasn't enough for a book so I got one of those velvet coloring pages.
Ah yes, I remember the scholastic book fair. I'm in Tennessee, and my dad is a librarian at a middle school. I remember dad quietly taking all the obviously LGBTQ books off the shelves as he set it up. How fun!
I'm Canadian and my mom is a (15+ years seasoned with a degree in Library Sciences) school librarian at a newly constructed middle school. She's had to build the library's repertoire of books completely from scratch. Difficult enough as it is already, now several district "advisors" monitor her spending and deny that certain books be purchased and catalogued if they contain even a hint of "adult content" such as books containing racism/introductions to critical race theory etc. It is by no means as bad as the US's restrictions, but it's frustrating to see, especially when books I read in middle school are now prohibited. Thank you so much for bringing this issue to light.
I was one of the wealthier kids at my elementary school but I had a friend who was not in a sea of children of PMCs and the book fair made me acutely aware and ashamed of wealth
When I saw reads with rachel’s video about Scholastic, I was shocked to hear about them not sending diverse books in the time period the person wanted them to. It is not difficult. This is rhetorical. Why is it so difficult to spread diversity? I hate how easy hate is spreading to everything and ruining even something that is supposed to be fun by excluding people. This is what is making the country move backwards when I felt we finally moved forwards.
Scholastic book fairs were always rough for me. My parents couldn't afford to give us money for more than one thing. I very much noticed the other kids who left with half the cool stuff while I had to find something I could afford that didn't suck
I loved the fair when I was a kid. My school had a program where you could get a free book from it but I do not remember the requirements or if everyone could participate. Everyone did however get a free bookmark and little newspaper type magazine with little articles and activities in it. I remember you could only really buy things during open house with your parents.
I was so excited to find the Happy Bunny keyboard stickers I coveted at the book fair online as an adult. I intend to remove the keys from a keyboard, and paint them to match the stickers before sticking them, and then sealing them to last longer than they would as just stickers. Adult money!
that dress is fire and am I the only one that remembers the scholastic personal pan pizza coupons for pizza hut??? between those and buying goosebumps at the fair that was basically all we got for entertainment other than battle toads on NES
My parents often wouldn’t give me money to get the books at the book fair but I loved going and since I was a fast reader, sometimes I’d be able to read a bunch of a book while I was in there. I always got a pile of books at Christmas instead of the book fair. Not sure if it was a finance thing or not, but my parents always put money on books for me rather than some other kinds of entertainment.
Fam, you got me to subscribe. I never minded the scholastic book fair, even though I couldn’t buy anything, because I could just make a list of books to eventually buy/check out with the catalog. What I ACTUALLY COULDN’T STAND were these fundraisers my school did where they sold crappy basic white mom items. Candles and ornaments and shit. If you couldn’t get X amount of items sold, you didn’t get to go to the all recess day and had to just sit in detention. For a whole school day. For doing nothing. What a miserable affair public schooling can be.
This video led to an epiphany for me. My older brother and sister become responsible for myself and four other siblings after my mother's death after we became estranged from my father. I had never thought of us as being from what was called a "broken home". The indoctrination runs deep!
It’s funny that clip of Belle on the ladder in the book store is literally what made me want to be a reader lol those animated books were so beautiful! Like how the food in Miyazaki movies (such as spirited away) looks so delicious to some- that was me with Disney movies and books. Like Omg those beautiful books that opened the old princess movies made me want a whole library haha
So I just started being a teaching intern for art at two elementary schools and I helped one of my schools with the school book fair. I was really excited about it even though I noticed it wasn’t Schoolastic like I was used to. The librarian told me that she chose a different company partially because of what Schoolastic did with their diverse books among other things (I think the price had also gone up for running it?) so we hosted this new one. She told me after the fair that we didn’t do as well in part because it wasn’t the familiar company but also the company that we chose had more expensive books. My district is both diverse and closer to lower income bracket and it was disheartening to see that many kids could ONLY afford the little cheap toys, erasers, pens, and journals and not the actual books. While our librarian is retiring, she said she probably would not recommend this company any more because of the price of books effecting the student’s access even if Schoolastic had their shady “opt-out” of diverse books. It was kind of sad to see but we did have other teachers try to support the book fair and fill their classrooms with the books for students
Subbie here! I love your content! I recognize I am a parent who falls on the privileged side of the scale-meaning my children have always been in the group who gets whatever they decide they want. To the point they don’t even care about the Scholastic Book Fair anymore. Well, that’s been the case the last 3 years. I appreciate your perspective and it makes me want to support some other programs for kids that are low income and or even have limited accessibility to the variety of human experiences that can be read out there. Thanks again for the content!
I did grow up pretty poor, however, my adopted mom had no problem buying me books almost any time I wanted (We had no cable, no movies/DVD’s, so only educational documentaries about nature & animals, & no electronics, so I think that’s why she spent money to buy me books) & I remember her letting me get many, many books from the Scholastic Book Fair & the Scholastic Catalog. I remember in most cases I was the kid that got the huge box delivered & I never once thought about the kids that wanted to order something, but couldn’t 💔 Looking back I wish I had asked my mom to order multiples of the “deal books” (the ones that were like $3/$4 paperbacks if a popular upcoming series & maybe I could have shared my oversized order of books with others 😢 Edit: I remember always trying to get one of the books that would come with an extra item like a necklace or figurine & my mom never allowed that 😂
I LOVED scholastic book fare. We had them here in Canada and I would get excited for them every year. I got a lot of great books like baby sitters club and goosebumps and even calvin and hobbes collections. Now that I think back tho, there was a lot of crap that was just advertising like picture books about tv shows with little actual writing in them. I remember one year my friend and I got in a huge fight because I got the last Full House picture book thing. The WEIRD ERASERS THO. Those I was never allowed to buy but always wanted them so bad.
That beginning bit with Heartstopper... it reminded me about the time that I, in 5th grade, was told that Raina Telgemeier's Drama was 'too mature' for me because of a same-sex kiss. I still haven't gotten a chance to read the book, a decade later.
My highschool english teacher would do a pretty cool book fair during the last 2 years i was in hs. They would have fun games setup and she would give out 1 free book from a group of YA authors that would visit. Its was definitely a passion project for her and i appreciated it so much
I didn't realize as a kid how poor we were until it came to the Scholastic Book Fair. One time I filled the order form out with 7 books I wanted to read, then the school called when I didn't pay. My mom managed it, paid for part of it and I had to choose which one I kept. I doubt that history of monster movies paperback is offered these days, but it brought me joy.
I think the main reason I never really bought anything at these book fairs is bc I just never remembered to tell my mom that we were having a book fair, or what day it would be on, even though I would read tons of books from the library or my teachers classroom. I liked looking at all the covers but I still felt a bit embarrassed when I would leave empty handed. At least from what I remember.
I remember crying because I couldn’t get a How to draw Manga book from my book fair. I have always love Anime and Mang and wanted to draw as well. I don’t remember how I ended up actually getting the book, but I did eventually get the book from the book fair. I look at it with nostalgia because I poured over those pages, I wanted more anime! But yes thank you for touching on the book fair from the perspective of the poor kids! That was really frustrating to sit through year after year!
Book fairs where for the rich or at least what I called the rich when I was younger. Now I realize it was for the family's who's parents gave a crap about them. 😞
As a Canadian I had never heard of these book fairs happening in schools. I knew of Scholastic as a publisher and that’s it. It’s an interesting experience to learn this is such a well-known thing South of the border.
5 minutes in and I'm crying and in pain. The socioeconomic inequality was so true. I was never much of a reader because of a decades-undiagnosed learning disability affecting reading, but I thought the book fair was the cat's ass. I always wanted to get something, whether it was a popular book like something from Goosebumps or something random that attracted my attention. But my parents were middle class and seldom gave me enough money to support the tiny about of desire I had to read. So I grow up having trouble reading and developing zero self-esteem because of it, struggling in school because I'm being graded on reading ability without any help to succeed, and then had my parents censor the tiny amount of reading that I did want to do because we were a working class family. Not poor and disadvantaged, but certainly not rich. To this day, now 40, I struggle to read for pleasure because it was never pleasurable and never supported. For that big press statement, yeah... Scholastic is committed to making a world where kids can see themselves in stories, but immediately backed down to a bunch of angry Karens. If some parent doesn't want their kid reading stories about people who are different than them, whatever. But that shouldn't be allowed to prohibit another kid from being able to. All they've down is release a press statement that says they bow to the radical right and support and endorse bigotry.
In the UK when scholastic book fairs came around, we were all given a £1 book token that you could spend there, which helped make the books a little bit more affordable. I think books end to be a little bit cheaper here too, not sure. Though i do remember on Christmas my primary school used to give out one free book to everyone, usually micheal morpurgo titles or the like. As a kid who loved reading, i loved it.
I’ve had these throughout elementary and middle school. It was tiring every time and the only time I brought my mom to one, she bought me a book I’ll never read. I even told her no and she ignored it. Thankfully, I made a profit off the book when I sold it to a library. It was a wolf book
We had these book fairs in Ireland as well. I remember the catalogues so clearly. I once stole money from my grandparents house to buy a book. Not because my parents couldn't afford to give me money but they would never have justified the expense. Looking back now, they were right, those books could be expensive. I loved reading and just wanted to fit in with my excited classmates.
Our child's school did a Literati book fair this round. I think the reason they switched companies is bc Library is no longer it's own special area but the children can join book clubs and Literati helps facilitate the book club for each child to have copies of the book to use. Otherwise the school library has become a quick 15min a week check out process unlike years before that involved literary activities every week for an hour. ETA: there were significantly less swag style purchases available than at the scholastic fairs of years past.
Yes literati is a decent alternative. They had a lot of issues with expanding their business. I've heard from multiple librarians that literally will cancel their book fairs at the last minute because they're too overextended to stock more fairs
Tysm for this video!! There was also this huge issue of in captain underpants, Harold in the future canonically has a husband, and the comic book thats shows this was banned in some places because it was deemed “inappropriate” :((
Yea I remember this… as a kid I had a really bad childhood and my escape was reading. But I was never really able to get much at the book fair due to being poor. Won’t lie, it’s things like that, that made me realize we were poor. Now I’m 24, still stuck in the poverty trap. My mom was able to get out of it, but I’m still starving.
As a kid who was also poor, these types of events always had me feel so out of place and sad. It was hard for me to understand why we had so little money when my parents worked so hard. Unfortunately, we're in this same boat even now and it's getting worse with inflation
i have memories of buying my sister every new diary of a wimpy kid book that came out as a present for her i, on the other hand, was THE captain underpants fan
I remember getting in trouble because of a scholastic book fair. I think I was in like 4th grade and my mom had given me 20 bucks to get whatever I wanted. My friend really wanted the Young Jack Sparrow book that had just come out but he didn't have money so I bought it for him and with the change bought myself some bookmarks or something. When my mom found out she was soooo pissed because we were also very poor I was just too dumb to know that.
In San Diego, I remember the book faire in the 80s was exciting, fun, colorful and totally unaffordable. I only remember one book I bought, based on the first episode of TV show I loved called Voyagers. Every year thereafter, was less pomp and display and reduced to a short, tiny print price list.
I loved the book fair. It was super easy to steal from and as bad as it sounds, that was the best way for a lot of us to get the books we wanted to read.
The book fair was bittersweet for me! On one hand my parents were low on money and knew I loved it, but never were able to give me the money themselves. But I i had a few teachers throughout those years that would get me one thing and its those same teachers that went on to inspire me to want to be a teacher someday myself. Teachers like them who supported kids pike me (poorer kids, and kids with neurodivergencies, but thats not related to this...entirely lol) made a huge difference in making mt life as a kid fun and bearable where, if I hadn't ever had them, i kight have been a lot sadder of a lid, especially later on when my mom was battling (and later lost) cancer. Though one year this bully kid who came from a middle to upper class family, stole the thing a teacher funded and by the time I got it back, it was mostly used. I was distraught lmao.
It’s interesting learning about stuff like this now (granted I haven’t thought about the book fair in quite a while) but as soon as I started thinking about it it is interesting how this event is literally just about making money off of books and that those that couldn’t afford books were left without books to take home and enjoy and now books getting taken away for simply being diverse and having topics that don’t get talked about enough (much less in a way children can understand) is disappointing similar with other stuff from our childhoods not everything remains sugarcoated forever thank you for this video great job! ❤
Oh, I remember these events. We even received the catalogs of books we could order, but my parents always gave us siblings like 5 dollars each, so I always ended up buying old used books from the library, if anything at all. Though we were not awfully poor (even less now), it was definitely frustrating.
i remember being one of the only kids that didnt get money from my parents, and it made me so sad because i love books and i really wanted some, but everyone else had the money.
When my son was in first grade, 2 kids stole a bunch of toys and books from the book fair. They were from very wealthy, prominent families, I don't think anything came of it. Until the next year, when the low income after school program was cut. The parents that had the financial security and disposable time to volunteer regularly at the school and the staff involved at the book fair decided that the low income kids that were suddenly without an after school program were going to go on a book fair crime spree, stating the theft from the year before as proof. They harassed and interrogated the low income kids looking at books to the point of tears in some cases, wanting proof they had money to look and checking pockets selectively as they left. Those same rich kids from the year before got away with more 'free' toys. Yay public school.
What I like about students being able to get a toy at the book fair is that many kids seriously struggle with reading. If reading is a painful process for you, you're probably not going to want to buy a book (but you still want to participate in the book fair).
This is really interesting, but I'm surprised there was no mention of the recent controversies about Scholastic's editorial practices on the publishing side. I keep seeing things about how they're trying to push authors to avoid hot topics in the culture wars.
@@hughcaldwell1034There's a recent video by Reads with Rachel that talks about both issues - "Scholastic messed up". I first heard about the editorial issues maybe a year ago, probably on twitter, but I don't remember specifics. Edit: I found an article: NPR 4/15/23 "Scholastic wanted to license her children's book- if she cut a part about racism"
When I worked at the schools I would tell the kids I was friends with the book fairy. After school I would get the poor kids the book they wanted and it would be on their desk the next day. It helped with the other kids because I couldn't afford to get books for everyone but I made sure everyone got a book. But it wasn't from me, it was from the book fairy. The schools burned be badly so I'm done. I miss the kids but nothing else.
that is SO CUTE and kind!!!! i get it -- teacher burnout is very real. but that's so wonderful that you made sure everyone had a book
That is so sweet.
I have had a lot of parents offer to buy books for kids at the book fair so what I will usually do is check to see who has money and then kids who don't have money that it's their lucky day and they won a gift certificate.
I wish I had that. My sister had to save up money so I could get even a single book :(
What a kind thing to do. My best friend works with preschool and kindergarten age kids and I could totally see her doing something like that.
That's actually pure genius! I like that idea...
As a kid I couldn't afford them so I circled the ones I liked in the magazines and waited for the public library to get them so I could read them
Yes! "It's at the library" -- my mom.
SAME! I would take out books from the library at my school and read them… I read at least HALF of the comic section… (you can tell who I was XD)
Library's are the sh*t. We need to support them in our local communities!
can’t wait for this! as a kid who grew up significantly poorer than most kids in my largely upper middle class school, i definitely felt the sting when this event came around. luckily, my school had a policy where every kid got at least one book or item from the book fair up to a certain value, but it was always noticeable to me which kids took home a ton of stuff cause their parents gave them money.
Same here!!!
Ooo that's so fortunate! I never had such a program so I never got a book ever at any point. Year after year I'm just reminded that no one had money to spend on me. 🤷🏾 At least I had other things to do anyways, and my fav series were turned into other media that was free(er) to watch (never knew Magic School came from Scholastic!)
I can't remember if my school had something like that. I usually would want up to like 5 or 6 books, but mostly could only get like 3 at least.
Now looking back, I believe all I could really afford was a small toy like gadget or stickie hand and a pencil holder thingie.
I was the kid wandering the book fair with a calculator. And I always had to budget one item each for my siblings, since their school didn't have book fairs.
This is why people need to ACTUALLY read 1984. Not just shriek the number whenever they're told to actually care about others but what do I know?
People yelling out books and quotes that are non sequitur as all hell has been a thing since......ever, especially in the social media stage
yup!!!!! i'd love to do write a modern day 1984 adaptation one of these years
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSomg yes DO IT!
I've found that the people most likely to shriek out about 1984 are also the ones who think Fahrenheit 451 was an ideal society. Not that they've actually read either.
Fianlly someone else saying this! 1984 was one of the last books I read before I kinda fell off of reading and it's still one of my favorites. Very frustrating how RW people keep trying to co-opt it without actually knowing what the contents of the book even are.
“ Your parents had money *and wanted to give it to you* “ omg thank you for mentioning that my parents were always fine financially but I literally didn’t get birthday or Christmas presents I never bought anything besides a pencil at the book fairs. Although I will say my mom did take us to buy beanie babies every week which is a good memory I do have, god my heart is so mushed and bruised
Do you get Birthday & Christmas presents now? 😢💔
I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. You're absolutely right - even if parents have money they don't always want to share it or spend it on their kids. Some people are very selfish
I’m sorry you had to go through that.
I like how you included neglected kids even if their parents had money
@@vintageariseni don’t think that means you. i think they mean parents who have disposable income but instead of caring for their kids they leave them alone all the time, if they are sick they don’t get adequate care “the kid could be faking”, the child in question might be growing but won’t get clothes that fit. Parents who don’t spend time with their kids. Neglect can happen across classes. you’re not neglectful bc you don’t want your kid at the book fair.
@@vintagearisen It doesn't mean you. I was actually neglected and my sister had to scrounge up money just so I could get a SINGLE book every year. That's neglect. My "father" could've stopped spending money on his games for a single month so I could get even two books instead of forcing my sister, who was also a kid, to find money for a book for me
@@lovelysakurapetalsyt that's awful, I'm so sorry.
It took a long time to accept that this happened to me. Even as an adult, I suddenly remember something else and it’s also hard to accept my siblings did not have the same experience. My older sisters hair was always done, she had a closet full of formal dresses for school dances, I was never bought one dress my entire highschool career and my mom wouldn’t do my hair so it was always frizzy and I eventually cut it off for this and other reasons. Another example is how I was too scared to ask for prescription for my glasses, I wouldn’t bother asking for stuff for projects for school because I knew it would be a burden, and of course I knew better than to ask for scholastic book fair money.
One year, maybe 4th grade, a friends mom bought me a book despite her clearly thinking it odd I wasn’t given money as a kid who loved to read and who’s mom owned a successful local Montessori school. I really cherished that book because it was my only book fair book…it was a book from the Jewel Kingdom series and came with a green necklace, can’t remember the story anymore.
@@TahtahmesDiary same for me. My parents owned a business but lived out of state from me (illegal). I had one shopping trip for the entirety of high school for one pair of jeans. I wore my middle school clothes for all of high school. Barely left me enough money for a disgusting school lunch, bus fare, and a pot noodles for dinner.
My son just had a scholastic book fair at his school this week. Their book selection is abysmal. Almost no nonfiction. There are “girl books” in one section, “boy books” in another & then a sort of mix in the middle. That set up causes a bit of a problem because he loves all things cats, those types of books are always in the “girls section” and he’s embarrassed to go look.
& from what I’ve noticed, they’re not really selling toys separately. They have Lego books, but then there will be some lego pieces/figures attached to the front. Or a Pokémon book with a little pokeball toy attached to the front. That kind of thing. Idk if this is typical of all of their book fairs, but I’ve noticed that at this particular school.
Well who they think is Garfield's, Heathcliff's, Simon's Cat's, and so ons cat parents?
They only have newer books I’ve noticed. He loves Garfield, though. & omg heathcliff, I completely forgot about that show lol. I’ll have to look up the other ones
@@lindseystein9676 All the more reason they were totally wrong to put books about man's REAL best friend in the "girl books" section. It's like Peggy Hill would say, there are no "boy books" or "girl books" they're just books!
That's how it is in my son's school as well, he doesn't care where the book is, he'll grab it. He told his friend, "If you like it, get it, don't be embarrassed about the things you like to read."
This makes me really sad because I went to a private Lutheran school growing up and the book fair was the ONLY time I really was able to be exposed to different people and cultures. I am asexual, so I never got the bullying that the gay kids got but I never understood the appeal of romance novels and such and almost always wanted a science book about animals or chemistry (which were always there!). Now I am a veterinarian and pretty much point to the book fair for those books that I loved to shreds (literally).
ngl my jaw dropped at the ruby bridges one. i read that book as a kid and as a canadian who wasn’t taught about the american civil rights movement in elementary school at all it had a profound impact on me at that age
i'm disgusted they thought that book could be controversial
Shout out for Canada. You didn't learn about the civil rights movement in school (neither did I) because our school stop teaching anything after 1945. It's horrible to think every year, important topics like the last century of our country and all of the relevant social developments that came from it get pushed aside so we can relearn about Upper and Lower Canada and the World Wars again. It is absurd how much we ignore history in this country.
I feel so bad for kids these days growing up in certain states. When I was little, they were perfectly willing to teach about Ruby Bridges, and nobody batted an eye. Now, you can’t even mention her without having every parent in town coming for your throat. People these days are wrapping their kids in styrofoam so they don’t have to be exposed to the real world. These people are going to be so badly prepared for adulthood.
They're going after you for teaching their kids about Ruby Bridges and how bad it was for non-whites because they don't want their kids to know what they themselves are teaching the kids is evil.
Our school just hired Boosterthon to do a fun run. I looked into the company and was disgusted that they charge the school a $2k fee and then take almost 50% of the funds raised. Some of these companies forbid the school from being transparent about the amounts the company makes too.
Well, yeah. You can't say the quiet part loud. How would they make money?
We are doing boosterthon too 😖 just got the flyer for it this week.
My kid did a boosterthon last month. Hey, at least they gave her a keychain 😄
I hate those type of school fundraisers. I refuse to participate in them.
I still remember the first time my kid came home with a flyer from a fundraiser (don’t remember which company). He was so excited and said he wanted to earn enough money to get the headphones as a prize.
The headphones were these cheap pieces of crap with the company’s branding on them and to get them he needed to get $1,000 in donations.
Instead I bought him some new headphones and bought his teacher some things she needed for her classroom (lots of snacks for the kids, pencils, expo markers, books for her in class library, and some other stuff she said she needed).
I was fortunate that we could afford it, and I figured that was a better use of around $100 than giving it to that fundraiser.
It became a tradition while he was in elementary school that every year when they did the fundraiser, I’d just ask his teachers what they needed for their classrooms, and I’d buy them some supplies.
My daughter did a popcorn fundraiser and it was the same thing. I should have just given the money directly
as a former kid who stole a book from the book fair, no children should feel they have to resort to stealing to be able to bring a book home as their own, and if i wasn't shamed so much for being too poor i would've never even considered theft.
I’m so sorry 😢
❤
Bro I used to rob those things. At LEAST 5 things each day😭. I was that kid who never took my coat off so I was never caught
At least school taught you SOMETHING useful for the real world
Me too 😮 once.
My parents were going through a legal battle over child support and basically each refused to take me to the book fair, saying the OTHER should do it.
I felt like a total felon 😂 I ended up donating it to the public library because I couldn't handle the weight of my crime 😂 (at 7 years old )
My 4th/5th grade teacher was lucky enough to have a large amount of disposable income. She used that to ensure every kid in the class was able to get a book from the book fair if they wanted one.
My kids school encourages parents who can to donate to a fund for the kids whose parents can't afford it
Awwwww!
Fun fact: I tricked someone into buying a library book at a book fair once when I was like 8. I don't know how they missed the sticker but they did and it was a perfect testimant to how many products in the book fair were literally in the library shelves!
... also if you want an example of how many "how do you do fellow kids" vibes Scholastic was giving off, look no further than the Pokemon "Official" handbook filled with so much incorrect information that hardcore pokemon fans meme on it! Yeah, go ahead little Timmy. Use your master ball on a tentacruel or fearow, its fine! Look, even Prof Oak himself says so!
That's because they were the same. Libraries get credits, from the book fair profits, to buy the Scholastic books.
The “fellow kids” aspect was certainly effective. I could’ve gotten a new story I haven’t read before. Something that got my imagination running.
But no, I just had to buy the book with SpongeBob on the cover. Purely because it was SpongeBob. And it was literally just an episode I’ve already seen hundreds of times transcribed into a book. Nothing unique.
ah yea was it that red book, and then was the collectors one thats green with mew and togipi? i dont remember reading it sied to use masterball. but was expecting collectors edition if has togipi, it would have all the missingnos. i tried to write them in but ran out room ofc.
oh deluxe handbook, unable to comprehend evolution that isnt branched or linear. (nincada -->ninjask & shedinja)
Oohhhh my word. The fact that Usborne is an MLM *blows* my mind. I grew up with *so* many Usborne books, living in the UK. As far as I know, they were always being sold in bookshops. It never would have occurred to me that this was a particularly nefarious publishing company.
i mean this as a compliment, im so obsessed with the ugly/cringe cute aesthetic with your fashion. your style isnt quite my thing, but i also love to design clothes, and it is always beautiful to see other people pushing the boundaries of fashion and i love it. everything is so unique and creative and its really encouraging to see other people being successful in their little fashion niche.
thank you! yeah i'm definitely inspired by the 90s neon ugly animation styles we saw on nickelodeon and such. it's a unique aesthetic for sure
My bookmark hoarding is 100% because of the book fair. They always had bookmarks for about a dollar. As one of the poor kids, it was not too difficult for me to scrounge up change. So, most of the time I would end up with about three bookmarks.
@@metacrisis_roas someone who bought all the touristy shit mainly as gifts, postcards make more sense because even if u don't send them they weigh much less and take up less space in a suitcase.
@@metacrisis_ro 😆
O.O Was I a poor kid too?! I loved bookmarks. *world crumbles*
@@ScooterinAB 😂Liking the bookmarks doesn't make you a poor kid. Some people just really like bookmarks. It was just one of the few things that poor kids like me could buy so it shaped us a little bit.
I can remember critics of the book fair in the 1980s pitching fits because the items offered at the book fair were not higher quality and more educational.
People had to explain to them, like they were 5, that they wanted to keep it in a price range that kids could handle with their allowance money.
Of course, there were kids that were unable to purchase books or accessories then. Increasing the prices would not help anyone.
Also, it was for kids. It wasn’t meant to be incredibly serious or strictly educational. Recreational reading for twerps was the bread and butter of the SBF.
I still have my Knight Rider and Gremlin audio books (books on tape). I enjoyed the crap out of them but I also loved to read. I primarily read non fiction books in the school library.
This was always the worst time in school to not have money when these book fairs came around…. Everything is so expensive! Excited that you’re doing this. These book fairs did expose me to a lot of books but being a poor kid it was hard on my parents.
I'm glad that you included neglected kids here because, as someone who grew up neglected, I've loathed these book fairs as a kid specifically because they were yet another part of childhood that I never got to experience due to my shitty parents. It was very alienating seeing all the kids with cool school supplies and being the only person in class wearing ill-fitting clothes who left empty-handed.
I get it 😪 my parents were in an ugly divorce when I was 6 and each refused to take me to the book fair or pay for any books because it was the OTHER parents responsibility.
My mother hates my father more than she loves me sometimes 🤷♂️ I remember pur school made everyone go during school hours. And I found this AMAZING book about wizards.
So I stole it 😭🤭 in my defense I was a first grader. Im sorry 😂❤ I loved that book though but I felt super guilty so I donated it to the local library lop
When I was in elementary school, we also had a day when the library was full of books that had been donated by a variety of publishers.
We got to come down by grade and pick a book to take home. Some teachers had reading days the next day, when we could devour our new free book. It was awesome, and usually around the same time as the book fair, so everybody always got at least one book a year.
My school was in a low-income area, so I wonder if that was a factor in this event existing?
I have better memories of that event than the book fair, honestly.
I'm wondering if this was a RIF (Reading is Fundamental) program. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we would get books twice a year like you described. I still have a few of my favorites all these years later. I never saw a scholastic book fair until I was in high school in the late 80s. I went to a very rural, small town school.
@@Jessica.Wakefield Yes! That's what it was called! Thank you!
@@Jessica.Wakefield I used to be on that site every day when we first got internet at home LOL
I grew up in a Southern city. We loved the book fair because it got us excited about books & the accessories. I don't remember ever being sad about it, even though I think I only bought something 1 time.
I was a book kid, I was constantly constantly reading, but man as cool as these days were they always left me feeling bruised and left out because my family couldn’t afford to just give me money for crap. One year they did and I went feral mulling over every possible option. I decided on a naruto poster book and I actually still have some of the posters even now over a decade later
The World War II stance is insane to me. I remember reading a book in like second grade about a Jewish girl during WWII. I got from the public school library in my elementary school. Could it been the diary of Anne frank? I’m not sure. But being introduced to these topics at a young age provided me with the opportunity to become a more empathetic and understanding person at a younger age. Perhaps my little brain could handle it while others’ maybe can’t, but I remember the book having a profound impact on the way I treated others. Those ideals stand in my soul to this day.
I wonder, do they promote books about other wars or conflicts, or is the entire topic of war off-limits?
If only WW II is off-limits, I see that as terrifyingly sus.
Could it have been ‘The book thief’? I’ve been told to read that book and watch the subsequent movie, it looks quite powerful.
Maybe, I’m not sure. I just remember it impacting my now tightly-held ideal that everyone should be treated the same no matter where the come from.
I remember reading one too, I can't remember if it was fiction or nonfiction but it was a thick little book and I think the title was "the star of david" or that was the key picture on the cover. Like why would we not be able to read something like that when we are the age group learning it?
@@julzmusic8708 i read that book in 6th grade, its amazing! definitely one of my favorite books. i must read it again.
I have a distinct traumatic memory of my school's librarian trying to sell my mom books I didn't want at the fair. I was aware even at that age we weren't the richest, and having a childish imagination, I thought my mom buying those books I didn't even want would literally make us homeless lol!
The mind of a 10 year old is wild!
One if the reasons that scholastic doesn't have much competition is that the supply chainlogistics of running book fairs is insane. Tgey are basically running a new pop up store in thousands of locations every single week..
School librarian here and we had the "diverse voices" case by my request because I'm a shit stirrer. It was all the same books featuring BIPOC and characters with disabilities WE'D ALREADY HAD for the last three years, just segregated in their own case. To top it off, segregating it forced me to take an extra case and then it got shoved into the corner making the problem even more obvious!!
I would love to be interviewed as an expert on this since I am a librarian and I have run something like 20 to 25 different book fairs and I have seen truly every manner of insanity.
Any specific stories you'd like to share? You'll have at least one person to read them
Make that too. I wanna hear it all. I came here in 6th grade from another country and then I became ill, and went straight to 9th grade. I only ever experienced it that year, and we thought everything was overpriced and hypercommercialized, and this is coming from someone who collected superhero stuff/dinosaur stuff. The science books I wanted were the most expensive by far. This was in the year 2000.They didn't do the fair in high school. Wonder why.
I hated the book fair because I was too poor to get anything. All the school fundraising events like that left me feeling horrible.
Worst was the time where kids who sold a certain amount of items got to leave class for some special event with pizza and all the others (aka the poor kids) had to stay in class with busy work.
It's sad...at Scolastic book fair I got "The Eye, the Ear and the Arm" and was introduced to afrofuturism. That book rocks. But it was the '90s
Librarian here! I run two book fairs a year, but I do not use Scholastic. The percentage I get back goes to pay for author visits to my school. I do try to buy books for every teacher on campus, and I am lucky to have a few parents willing to buy 1 book for each kid in the class. This is rare. I do wish I could buy a book for each kid, but my district was able to give each title 1 kid 3 free books this school year. The books were book fair quality and this makes me feel better about not being able to buy books for each kid
As someone who grew up poor, i never really felt the sting of the book fair because i had a dad with a love of reading who wanted to foster that same love in me. We couldn't afford much, but i would bring home the magazine and we'd negotiate which books i want and which ones we could afford every year and come to a compromise. I only had one rule, i had an extra little bit more than enough for whatever books we negotiated, but if i bought more than one thing that wasn't either a book or educational in some way (like an experiment kit or a new hobby to learn like cats's cradle) i would get in trouble, like being grounded. I wasn't always happy that i couldn't get toys like everyone else at the time, but i am so grateful that he worked so hard to keep me interested in books and the negotiating over a budget taught me the valuable skills of debate and negotiation.
I'm really upset that scholastic and the US govt are deciding to pick and choose what stories are worth sharing, and to take representation away from diverse families. It's horrible, and i hope they change their mind, but more and more i see my country represented in star trek less by humans and more by ferengi. It's sad, as funny as that comparison sounds. I hope when my future kids are growing up, we've moved past this capitalist extremism and the "parents' rights to teach ignorance and hatred" movement
As a child that grew up poor all my life, i hated book fairs. My family never had the money, and i remember 4th grade when all the kids went, and i was forced to sit in the classroom. All the kids would go on about the stuff they got, and i vividly remember my teacher telling me "I'm really sorry you couldn't go, maybe next year :)"
Oh Scholastic Book Fairs, or as I would probably call them in hindsight, an excuse to collect scented (and sparkly) stationery, see weird posters (like that was my first exposure to 1D), and often a Wimpy Kid or Big Nate book.
I wonder if that one Club Penguin book I gave away only a few years back was from one. For sure at least, it was all about highlighters.
Honestly looking back there were so many "how do you do fellow kids" vibes in book fairs.
Example: The "Official" pokemon handbooks published by scholastic that were chocked full of incorrect information. 😂
I remember when the schoolastic book fair came around, other kids would try and steal my money. Ignore the fact that I was one of the poorest kids and they already had money from their parents. But I was able to get a book or pen when I could. I still felt upset that I had no money to get the good stuff.
My school didn’t have physical fairs, just what was called the book club. We’d get the catalogue and an order sheet to take home. Everything was bought through the library and it was pretty discrete. You didn’t know what anyone else was doing unless they told you. I think I prefer that since it avoided people being singled out.
I worked for my university library and had to work the book fair. The amount of kids who handed me blank checks and $100 bills was wild. I could have walked away with 1000s of dollar if I was worse human. As I kid who never had money for the book fair. It was triggering and weird.
Scholastic book fairs were such a bummer for me as a kid, so of course when my kid hit kindergarten and had her first one I went ALL OUT. Very happy to learn that our little school just puts the books quietly into their bags and they come straight home, no public displays, no book fairs, no sending kids with money. And so I stopped buying scholastic books because the selection and the quality suuuuuucks. 😂
Thank you for this great WTF Scholastic analysis! And especially for bringing more attention to the role librarians are playing in this assault on our rights to read. They are on the front lines more than most educators and advocates when it comes to these bans.
My local school district just had a book fair. Instead of bringing in scholastic, they teamed up with a local used bookstore and had books for as little as 50¢.
I loved the book fair. Probably because my parents were like yes reading is an excellent hobby and you should embrace it. My daughter's school says they welcome everyone but we will see when she has her 1st book fair I suppose.
Great video as always, Savy! I still find it hard to believe that I didn't become a LGBTQ POC by osmosis because that must be what causes that. It's the only way I can think some conservatives would justify banning books about objective reality. #GayByOsmosis
right?!?!?! how are you still straight
The only time I got to buy books as a kid was when my library would get rid of their old books and they had a policy where you could stuff as many books as you could in a plastic grocery bag and it was $2 per bag
That sounds actually amazing! My school never did that, but I did have quite a few teachers who, when they had books they wanted to get rid of, would see if i wanted to be its second home since i was usually the big reader in my class
@@ginamaynard2698 yes I have very fond memories of this my mom would usually let me fill up at least 2-3 bags! 🥰
Mine did that once. I got eye of the world at 10 for $1. I've still got it on the shelf with a couple other school library books that I found after high-school. I've been terrified to return those, the fine must be through the roof after a decade.
Just gave my son money to blow on the book fair this week. I grew up in 80s/90s and Loved Goosebumps books! My parents couldn't afford to give me money for it when I was a kid and now I'm living vicariously through my kid.
My big discovery at the book fairs in the UK was Animorphs, and you'd better believe I had strong feelings about the Iraq war after growing up reading that
The last of those books were published in May 2001 and I love that the author stood by the ending to say “War is hell and it doesn’t end with a neat bow or with clear heroes”
That message couldn’t have come at a better time in history.
My very first job was with Scholastics, and it was a horrible experience. It wasn't even the teacher Karens being rude as heck calling in their class book orders, it was the company itself. New hires couldn't adjust their schedule/weren't allowed to adjust their schedule for a period of time, several months. I was attending community college, and a class I was taking would end at around 4:45 and I had to be there at 5, and it was physically impossible to drive from the college to work, park, get my headset on, and be on the floor ready to take calls. I begged my managers, I showed them my schedule, I tried so hard, I did everything I could short of dropping my college class to get there. They refused to change/allocate me even 10 minutes because of my college class. I had to quit to keep going to school, and it was so depressing, that my first job with an academic friendly bent like Scholastic would make me drop out of a class than give me 10 minutes.
I think my fondest memory of the book fair, even as a poor kid, was when a teacher bought me my own copy of a book that I was so excited at the idea of reading. My teacher had us write down on scrap paper what book should be added to the classroom library if we found it intriguing enough for a class read out loud and I wrote down the one I very much wanted to read. I remember watching the book trailer and getting excited and just talking about the book even though there was no way I could actually buy it and the fair wasn't even at school yet.
I get way too emotional thinking how much that book means to me and that it was my teacher that got it for me overall (I would get overly happy getting a 50 cent bookmark, imagine how happy a dream book made me). Little me made my friends read the book to understand my excitment and then we made up playground games of the series because we could
I still have the original copy that was given to me in all its beat up glory. Serafina and the Black Cloak and it's non existent fanbase were pretty much my childhood and I don't know how I would have gotten my hands on it when I did if it weren't for that teacher.
(Thanks to any teacher that bought kids books from the fair. At some point it made them really really happy. It sucks that it really depends on income if a kid can get the book they want to read)
I did not grow up in a home of means, my grandpa was very upset with the idea that I would not have any further education beyond public. He would go out of his way and reach into his pocket to give me money for the book fair every year because he wanted me to expand my horizons, I didn't understand it at the time but I later learned that this often meant he would just stick to PB&j and leftovers for the following 2 weeks until his benefit check for the following month. I have very fond memories of my book fairs, but it is tainted with the problematic history and current trajectory of the scholastic book now. That said it was always awesome to be able to get everything I wanted, something even the rich kids my school could not say.
I was the Scholastic Book Fair chairperson for 3 years (after volunteering as a helper for 2 years) in 2013-2018 in a low income neighborhood and the school would get around half of the money made to go toward book for the school (if we bought books we got more money, or if we wanted money it would be more like 30%) and one year I refused to put out the junk and we actually sold more books (imagine that! take out the over priced crap and you sell more literature) and then another year I got every student in the school to fill out their Wish Card, and instead of sending it home with them (talk about pleading for the parents to pay up after letting the child actually look around and pick out a book before writing it down and taking that home).. I had them put it into a drawing. Then I had all the teachers nominate any students in their classes they knew wouldn't be sent with money to buy anything and I made it so that those students won. It ended up being a ton of work to not only get those names but also find their ticket and get them the book they wanted. The only rule I made was the book they wrote couldn't contain a toy. Which meant that every student got a book that year that usually didn't get one and they were announced over the intercom as having won. That was the last year my son was in elementary school and I wanted to make sure those students that didn't usually get books got at least one. :) I felt very accomplished and absolutely loved being able to volunteer so much time to doing the book fairs. :)
I always loved the book fair. I know youre here to make me sad about it, but it was a wonderful time of year for me. I couldnt always get anything, but I'd save for months just to get one or two new books, and my mom would often have a few dollars she could give to me, my sister, and my brother. We were very poor, so entertainment that didn't end up in one of us needing stitches was often hard to come by.
oh i'm definitely not here to make you sad about it! i'm really glad you enjoyed it!
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSWell, glad to hear that. I do absolutely feel like they were not the best way to handle things, but they were what we had. I would likely never been introduced to Animorphs without them, which continues to be my absolute favorite book series of all time. Some things need to be changed, especially Scholastic removing books to suit bigotry, but we do need something like this to get new books to kids who might otherwise never find them.
I never saw anyone actually buy books when the book fair came around. It was always the cool knickknacks people bought, not anything else.
I remember feeling awkward about these in school.. They always put them in the school library and I could not check out books. It was frustrating. It felt strange to have a traveling book store at school. Do they still have these?!
Yes, my kids have one happening right now
yea, they do. I used to love it as a kid I used to love it but as an educator I see the issues with it
@@raydgreenwald7788 I never quite understood how it was appropriate to bring retail business into schools on the school’s time…. Though I despised school fundraisers with prizes for students who sold the most of whatever it was that year. The kids with rich parents got all kinds of rewards for selling magazines, chocolates, or fruits for school fundraising because they just handed their booklet to their parents to take to work. It was so distracting and socially a nightmare. I know schools need money but…. … using children as sales agents seems exploitative. (Edited 11/10/23 for clarity)
If you don't mind me asking, how come you couldn't check out books?
@@lucienfortner841 When the book fair came, the library was closed. You could only return books.
I remember getting a $20 bill for the fair and wanting to buy my elementary hyper fixation (read crush to an undiagnosed 5 to 9 year old) a spy kit and whose idea was foiled by my 3rd grade teacher. I mainly browsed. We all wanted the latest hp book which was always years above our reading level.
I hated book fair day. We only ever had the money for me to get a new bookmark and maybe a pencil. I even had a friends mom give us money once, but it wasn't enough for a book so I got one of those velvet coloring pages.
Same lol
Ah yes, I remember the scholastic book fair. I'm in Tennessee, and my dad is a librarian at a middle school. I remember dad quietly taking all the obviously LGBTQ books off the shelves as he set it up. How fun!
I'm Canadian and my mom is a (15+ years seasoned with a degree in Library Sciences) school librarian at a newly constructed middle school. She's had to build the library's repertoire of books completely from scratch. Difficult enough as it is already, now several district "advisors" monitor her spending and deny that certain books be purchased and catalogued if they contain even a hint of "adult content" such as books containing racism/introductions to critical race theory etc. It is by no means as bad as the US's restrictions, but it's frustrating to see, especially when books I read in middle school are now prohibited.
Thank you so much for bringing this issue to light.
I was one of the wealthier kids at my elementary school but I had a friend who was not in a sea of children of PMCs and the book fair made me acutely aware and ashamed of wealth
When I saw reads with rachel’s video about Scholastic, I was shocked to hear about them not sending diverse books in the time period the person wanted them to. It is not difficult.
This is rhetorical. Why is it so difficult to spread diversity? I hate how easy hate is spreading to everything and ruining even something that is supposed to be fun by excluding people.
This is what is making the country move backwards when I felt we finally moved forwards.
Scholastic book fairs were always rough for me. My parents couldn't afford to give us money for more than one thing. I very much noticed the other kids who left with half the cool stuff while I had to find something I could afford that didn't suck
I loved the fair when I was a kid. My school had a program where you could get a free book from it but I do not remember the requirements or if everyone could participate. Everyone did however get a free bookmark and little newspaper type magazine with little articles and activities in it. I remember you could only really buy things during open house with your parents.
I was so excited to find the Happy Bunny keyboard stickers I coveted at the book fair online as an adult. I intend to remove the keys from a keyboard, and paint them to match the stickers before sticking them, and then sealing them to last longer than they would as just stickers. Adult money!
that dress is fire and am I the only one that remembers the scholastic personal pan pizza coupons for pizza hut??? between those and buying goosebumps at the fair that was basically all we got for entertainment other than battle toads on NES
My parents often wouldn’t give me money to get the books at the book fair but I loved going and since I was a fast reader, sometimes I’d be able to read a bunch of a book while I was in there. I always got a pile of books at Christmas instead of the book fair. Not sure if it was a finance thing or not, but my parents always put money on books for me rather than some other kinds of entertainment.
Fam, you got me to subscribe. I never minded the scholastic book fair, even though I couldn’t buy anything, because I could just make a list of books to eventually buy/check out with the catalog.
What I ACTUALLY COULDN’T STAND were these fundraisers my school did where they sold crappy basic white mom items. Candles and ornaments and shit. If you couldn’t get X amount of items sold, you didn’t get to go to the all recess day and had to just sit in detention. For a whole school day. For doing nothing.
What a miserable affair public schooling can be.
This video led to an epiphany for me. My older brother and sister become responsible for myself and four other siblings after my mother's death after we became estranged from my father. I had never thought of us as being from what was called a "broken home". The indoctrination runs deep!
It’s funny that clip of Belle on the ladder in the book store is literally what made me want to be a reader lol those animated books were so beautiful! Like how the food in Miyazaki movies (such as spirited away) looks so delicious to some- that was me with Disney movies and books. Like Omg those beautiful books that opened the old princess movies made me want a whole library haha
“It is the official position….” is giving the same energy as “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” 😂
So I just started being a teaching intern for art at two elementary schools and I helped one of my schools with the school book fair. I was really excited about it even though I noticed it wasn’t Schoolastic like I was used to. The librarian told me that she chose a different company partially because of what Schoolastic did with their diverse books among other things (I think the price had also gone up for running it?) so we hosted this new one. She told me after the fair that we didn’t do as well in part because it wasn’t the familiar company but also the company that we chose had more expensive books. My district is both diverse and closer to lower income bracket and it was disheartening to see that many kids could ONLY afford the little cheap toys, erasers, pens, and journals and not the actual books. While our librarian is retiring, she said she probably would not recommend this company any more because of the price of books effecting the student’s access even if Schoolastic had their shady “opt-out” of diverse books. It was kind of sad to see but we did have other teachers try to support the book fair and fill their classrooms with the books for students
Subbie here! I love your content! I recognize I am a parent who falls on the privileged side of the scale-meaning my children have always been in the group who gets whatever they decide they want. To the point they don’t even care about the Scholastic Book Fair anymore. Well, that’s been the case the last 3 years.
I appreciate your perspective and it makes me want to support some other programs for kids that are low income and or even have limited accessibility to the variety of human experiences that can be read out there.
Thanks again for the content!
I did grow up pretty poor, however, my adopted mom had no problem buying me books almost any time I wanted (We had no cable, no movies/DVD’s, so only educational documentaries about nature & animals, & no electronics, so I think that’s why she spent money to buy me books) & I remember her letting me get many, many books from the Scholastic Book Fair & the Scholastic Catalog. I remember in most cases I was the kid that got the huge box delivered & I never once thought about the kids that wanted to order something, but couldn’t 💔 Looking back I wish I had asked my mom to order multiples of the “deal books” (the ones that were like $3/$4 paperbacks if a popular upcoming series & maybe I could have shared my oversized order of books with others 😢
Edit: I remember always trying to get one of the books that would come with an extra item like a necklace or figurine & my mom never allowed that 😂
I LOVED scholastic book fare. We had them here in Canada and I would get excited for them every year. I got a lot of great books like baby sitters club and goosebumps and even calvin and hobbes collections. Now that I think back tho, there was a lot of crap that was just advertising like picture books about tv shows with little actual writing in them. I remember one year my friend and I got in a huge fight because I got the last Full House picture book thing. The WEIRD ERASERS THO. Those I was never allowed to buy but always wanted them so bad.
That beginning bit with Heartstopper... it reminded me about the time that I, in 5th grade, was told that Raina Telgemeier's Drama was 'too mature' for me because of a same-sex kiss. I still haven't gotten a chance to read the book, a decade later.
My highschool english teacher would do a pretty cool book fair during the last 2 years i was in hs. They would have fun games setup and she would give out 1 free book from a group of YA authors that would visit. Its was definitely a passion project for her and i appreciated it so much
I didn't realize as a kid how poor we were until it came to the Scholastic Book Fair. One time I filled the order form out with 7 books I wanted to read, then the school called when I didn't pay. My mom managed it, paid for part of it and I had to choose which one I kept. I doubt that history of monster movies paperback is offered these days, but it brought me joy.
I think the main reason I never really bought anything at these book fairs is bc I just never remembered to tell my mom that we were having a book fair, or what day it would be on, even though I would read tons of books from the library or my teachers classroom. I liked looking at all the covers but I still felt a bit embarrassed when I would leave empty handed. At least from what I remember.
I remember crying because I couldn’t get a How to draw Manga book from my book fair. I have always love Anime and Mang and wanted to draw as well. I don’t remember how I ended up actually getting the book, but I did eventually get the book from the book fair. I look at it with nostalgia because I poured over those pages, I wanted more anime! But yes thank you for touching on the book fair from the perspective of the poor kids! That was really frustrating to sit through year after year!
Book fairs where for the rich or at least what I called the rich when I was younger. Now I realize it was for the family's who's parents gave a crap about them. 😞
As a Canadian I had never heard of these book fairs happening in schools. I knew of Scholastic as a publisher and that’s it. It’s an interesting experience to learn this is such a well-known thing South of the border.
I'm Canadian too and we had Scholastic book fairs at my school. It must be a regional thing. Or even school by school.
We have these in Canada
Well I guess it’s just Quebec not having these. Or even just the school districts around the place I grew up.
@@littlefigue5186 Yeah, I grew up in Ontario.
5 minutes in and I'm crying and in pain. The socioeconomic inequality was so true. I was never much of a reader because of a decades-undiagnosed learning disability affecting reading, but I thought the book fair was the cat's ass. I always wanted to get something, whether it was a popular book like something from Goosebumps or something random that attracted my attention. But my parents were middle class and seldom gave me enough money to support the tiny about of desire I had to read. So I grow up having trouble reading and developing zero self-esteem because of it, struggling in school because I'm being graded on reading ability without any help to succeed, and then had my parents censor the tiny amount of reading that I did want to do because we were a working class family. Not poor and disadvantaged, but certainly not rich. To this day, now 40, I struggle to read for pleasure because it was never pleasurable and never supported.
For that big press statement, yeah... Scholastic is committed to making a world where kids can see themselves in stories, but immediately backed down to a bunch of angry Karens. If some parent doesn't want their kid reading stories about people who are different than them, whatever. But that shouldn't be allowed to prohibit another kid from being able to. All they've down is release a press statement that says they bow to the radical right and support and endorse bigotry.
In the UK when scholastic book fairs came around, we were all given a £1 book token that you could spend there, which helped make the books a little bit more affordable. I think books end to be a little bit cheaper here too, not sure. Though i do remember on Christmas my primary school used to give out one free book to everyone, usually micheal morpurgo titles or the like. As a kid who loved reading, i loved it.
I remember these… I wasn’t able to afford everything, but I did buy a few Minecraft books from it.. it was also a good memory 😭
I’ve had these throughout elementary and middle school. It was tiring every time and the only time I brought my mom to one, she bought me a book I’ll never read. I even told her no and she ignored it.
Thankfully, I made a profit off the book when I sold it to a library. It was a wolf book
We had these book fairs in Ireland as well. I remember the catalogues so clearly. I once stole money from my grandparents house to buy a book. Not because my parents couldn't afford to give me money but they would never have justified the expense. Looking back now, they were right, those books could be expensive. I loved reading and just wanted to fit in with my excited classmates.
"You're either white or political, male or political, straight or political."
**NAILED. IT. **
Our child's school did a Literati book fair this round. I think the reason they switched companies is bc Library is no longer it's own special area but the children can join book clubs and Literati helps facilitate the book club for each child to have copies of the book to use. Otherwise the school library has become a quick 15min a week check out process unlike years before that involved literary activities every week for an hour.
ETA: there were significantly less swag style purchases available than at the scholastic fairs of years past.
Yes literati is a decent alternative. They had a lot of issues with expanding their business. I've heard from multiple librarians that literally will cancel their book fairs at the last minute because they're too overextended to stock more fairs
Tysm for this video!! There was also this huge issue of in captain underpants, Harold in the future canonically has a husband, and the comic book thats shows this was banned in some places because it was deemed “inappropriate” :((
Yea I remember this… as a kid I had a really bad childhood and my escape was reading. But I was never really able to get much at the book fair due to being poor. Won’t lie, it’s things like that, that made me realize we were poor. Now I’m 24, still stuck in the poverty trap. My mom was able to get out of it, but I’m still starving.
As a kid who was also poor, these types of events always had me feel so out of place and sad. It was hard for me to understand why we had so little money when my parents worked so hard. Unfortunately, we're in this same boat even now and it's getting worse with inflation
Scholastic is prevalent in the UK too! Being a poor 90s kid I vividly remember these "fairs" in the school assembly hall
Don't forget the £1 book token you'd get that couldn't buy you anything 😢
i have memories of buying my sister every new diary of a wimpy kid book that came out as a present for her
i, on the other hand, was THE captain underpants fan
I remember getting in trouble because of a scholastic book fair. I think I was in like 4th grade and my mom had given me 20 bucks to get whatever I wanted. My friend really wanted the Young Jack Sparrow book that had just come out but he didn't have money so I bought it for him and with the change bought myself some bookmarks or something. When my mom found out she was soooo pissed because we were also very poor I was just too dumb to know that.
In San Diego, I remember the book faire in the 80s was exciting, fun, colorful and totally unaffordable. I only remember one book I bought, based on the first episode of TV show I loved called Voyagers. Every year thereafter, was less pomp and display and reduced to a short, tiny print price list.
I definitely misheard "Look at my dress" as "Look at my address" and thought for a second you were Sssniperwolfing yourself 😂
I loved the book fair. It was super easy to steal from and as bad as it sounds, that was the best way for a lot of us to get the books we wanted to read.
The book fair was bittersweet for me! On one hand my parents were low on money and knew I loved it, but never were able to give me the money themselves. But I i had a few teachers throughout those years that would get me one thing and its those same teachers that went on to inspire me to want to be a teacher someday myself. Teachers like them who supported kids pike me (poorer kids, and kids with neurodivergencies, but thats not related to this...entirely lol) made a huge difference in making mt life as a kid fun and bearable where, if I hadn't ever had them, i kight have been a lot sadder of a lid, especially later on when my mom was battling (and later lost) cancer.
Though one year this bully kid who came from a middle to upper class family, stole the thing a teacher funded and by the time I got it back, it was mostly used. I was distraught lmao.
I remember going to my sisters Scholastic book fair. It was at her private elementary school. The classism was insane! 😭😭
It’s interesting learning about stuff like this now (granted I haven’t thought about the book fair in quite a while) but as soon as I started thinking about it it is interesting how this event is literally just about making money off of books and that those that couldn’t afford books were left without books to take home and enjoy and now books getting taken away for simply being diverse and having topics that don’t get talked about enough (much less in a way children can understand) is disappointing similar with other stuff from our childhoods not everything remains sugarcoated forever thank you for this video great job! ❤
Oh, I remember these events.
We even received the catalogs of books we could order, but my parents always gave us siblings like 5 dollars each, so I always ended up buying old used books from the library, if anything at all. Though we were not awfully poor (even less now), it was definitely frustrating.
Book fairs were always bitter sweet growing up, cause while I didn't always have money for them, it was still fun to look around
All I remember is the catalog made out thin cheep paper. Since I found reading difficulty I had no interest in books.
i remember being one of the only kids that didnt get money from my parents, and it made me so sad because i love books and i really wanted some, but everyone else had the money.
When my son was in first grade, 2 kids stole a bunch of toys and books from the book fair. They were from very wealthy, prominent families, I don't think anything came of it. Until the next year, when the low income after school program was cut. The parents that had the financial security and disposable time to volunteer regularly at the school and the staff involved at the book fair decided that the low income kids that were suddenly without an after school program were going to go on a book fair crime spree, stating the theft from the year before as proof. They harassed and interrogated the low income kids looking at books to the point of tears in some cases, wanting proof they had money to look and checking pockets selectively as they left. Those same rich kids from the year before got away with more 'free' toys. Yay public school.
😮 That’s awful 😞
What I like about students being able to get a toy at the book fair is that many kids seriously struggle with reading. If reading is a painful process for you, you're probably not going to want to buy a book (but you still want to participate in the book fair).
This is really interesting, but I'm surprised there was no mention of the recent controversies about Scholastic's editorial practices on the publishing side. I keep seeing things about how they're trying to push authors to avoid hot topics in the culture wars.
Seriously? Any articles or videos you'd recommend on the topic?
@@hughcaldwell1034There's a recent video by Reads with Rachel that talks about both issues - "Scholastic messed up". I first heard about the editorial issues maybe a year ago, probably on twitter, but I don't remember specifics.
Edit: I found an article:
NPR 4/15/23 "Scholastic wanted to license her children's book- if she cut a part about racism"