A Bibliophile’s Nostalgia: Scholastic Book Fairs
I’m back again with my blog post series to revisit some bookish things that give me all the nostalgia feels. Today, I’ll be talking about Scholastic Book Fairs.
Imagine you’re a kid sitting at your desk for another long school day and your teacher announces that a special event is coming to town. Something that’s familiar along the lines of a catalog full of books that you love to order. You start to put the pieces together and your assumptions are correct. The Scholastic Book Fair is coming to your school!
In 1981, Scholastic launched its in-school book fairs business with the purchase of a California book fair. Scholastic Book Fairs currently hosts more than 120,000 book sale events in partnership with schools across the country still to this day. The book fair typically lasts a week and the setup of the fair is similar to a local bookstore except it’s a more mobile-friendly version. The fair is often filled with many popular bestsellers and a variety of books that kids will gravitate to.
As a kid, I loved getting the Scholastic catalog and asking my parents if I could pick out a new book that I wanted to read. But for me, the book fairs hold a special place in my heart. I loved how the fair looked like a pop-up bookstore and that I peruse the room full of books at my own leisure. I carefully made my way through the the stacks trying to discover what I wanted to purchase with the allowance my parents gave me.
I think that the book fairs further strengthened my love for reading that I had as a child and also introduced me to some of my favorite childhood series which hold a deep sense of nostalgia for me. I am so thankful that I got to attend these book fairs as a child and I hope that kids now have the same opportunity to experience the fairs like it. In a way, the Scholastic book fair also got me interested in larger-scale book fairs as an adult as well and when I do get to attend a book fair I feel connected to my kid self that loved these small mobile book fairs.
I hope that Scholastic Book Fair will continue to grow and instill a love for reading like it did for me and my friends and that book fairs will continue to thrive in exciting new ways.
Did you ever get to experience a Scholastic book fair or similar book fair as a child? What kind of an impact did it have on you? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
I love that you got to go to the fair! I never did because I grew up in towns or very small cities but I absolutely loved getting the little catalogues to browse through and imagine orders for (which were always dramatic, extreme, although I was lucky to always be able to order a book or two in the end LOL). Great memories and I love the fact that these fairs still happen.
The Scholastic catalogs were so memorable. They always had so many books to choose from. I wish there were Scholastic book fairs for adults.