Today I will set up my twentieth Scholastic Book Fair. Yes, I'm counting the two virtual fairs I did during that COVID lockdown year; that took some planning and advertising, too.
Scholastic isn't offering new themes each year any more, so I have to get creative. Since this is the first week of spring, I went with bees and flowers. Several hours of my spring break were spent in fluffing out these tissue creations and writing gift tags:
I have to admit that I was one spoiled librarian on my previous campus; with over a thousand students, there were a lot of volunteers who helped me set up, decorate, and run the fair. Now that I'm on a much smaller campus with a lot of working parents, my assistant and I are pretty much an army of two. But the fair is also a lot smaller, so there's less to set up. And I have to admit that I do like the decorating part, once I get over the anxiety of coming up with a theme.
When I realized that this was my twentieth book fair, I took a moment to celebrate all the steps that have become automatic for me. Ordering change, sending out the emails, printing the shopping hours labels for the flyers, advertising on Twitter, talking it up with the students. One of my favorite parts is making sure the doors are covered and decorated first, so the fair remains a surprise until shopping starts. I've amassed so many costumes (yes, I got a bee outfit or two for this fair!) that I should probably start recycling some themes. Hmmm, should the fall fair be pet-related again? Monsters? Castles and knights? Fantasy forest? So many choices...let's just get through this next week!
Wow, I love your theme and the flowers and decorations you created are fantastic. I personally love Scholastic book fairs especially when they sell a book for a dollar. Although I have never set up a book fair, I have attended several and was buying books as though I was a parent when my daughter-in-law was teaching third grade. I used to write skits with my drama students to help promote the fair for the elementary schools, too. Good luck this week!
ReplyDeleteGreat theme! How fun to dress up, too. Congrats on your 20th book fair! I think Scholastic should give out prizes for that.
ReplyDelete