 |
Check this Out!: Booking a Fair?
By Marie Ann Donovan and Mary Yockey
Document: Column
Introductory Paragraph: If you were an elementary-school student in the 1980s or later, chances are you experienced at least one book fair there before graduating. Mention of this annual rite of passage to your peers often elicits nostalgic reminiscences akin to this tweet: “Marry someone who makes you feel the way you felt during Scholastic book fair week in grade school” (Grady, 2017). For many in the past, the fair was a remarkable moment in daily school life. The library, cafeteria, or auditorium was transformed into a bookstore filled with shelves of possibilities—mostly new or recent, but occasionally some classic titles; stickers, pens, and notebooks; plush versions of favorite characters; and posters. When it was your classroom’s turn to visit and you entered the fair, for a moment you were transported to somewhere other than school—and that was magical. Like so many other aspects of our 21st-century lives, the school book fair continues to evolve. There now are online fairs (with plush and posters available too) that can be offered simultaneously with the in-school event or on their own. Within the last decade especially, competitors to Scholastic carved out some market share (Staake, 2024), though Scholastic solidly remains the leading provider. The smaller companies tend to specialize (e.g., sell books created only for fair distribution) and appeal to certain demographics (e.g., Christian); some only serve certain geographic areas. As book fair companies change the fair to meet what they think are the market’s preferences, so too is the perception of the fair’s worth and relevance (Ellis, 2021). Librarians, the vanguard for all things fair-related, are leading their colleagues in determining whether to sponsor book fairs in their 21st-century schools.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33600/IRCJ.52.4.2024.63
Page Numbers: 63-69
|
