Book Fair

The two weeks before Thanksgiving were book fair so, although I was surrounded by books every minute of every day, I didn't have a moment to think about them.  For those unfamiliar to the process, this is when Scholastic drops off a ton of books at the school and you convince the kids and parents to buy them for the benefit of the school.  At our school, I run this mess, not for the sake of Scholastic, who I am sure is doing very well, but for the school library, which gets absolutely NO MONEY except from the book fair to buy new books.  Having spent my elementary (and middle school) years, holed up in the school library, and being ever so disappointed at how small ours is and how little time the kids get to spend in it, I feel compelled to do whatever I can to make it better.  Rather than what we are reading this week, I am going to highlight some of the books at the fair - although Scholastic certainly doesn't need my help.

The big seller of the week was Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Ugly Truth.

  

The fifth installation in this comic series, we sold over a hundred copies of this book, primarily because it was released at the beginning of book fair and was therefore the hot new thing.  I, myself, am not terribly impressed by this series, but the kids seem to love it.  Written as a diary, and in handwriting, with comics throughout,  it meets the kids desire for illustrations while also being a chapter book.  Its popularity has also spawned quite a few imitators from Dork Diaries to Big Nate.  These two series were also extremely popular.

Any of these is such a quick read, that I would recommend the library for them, rather than purchasing.  Colin finished Wimpy Kid the afternoon we got it, even before we left the fair.  Of course, I say this even though they all have come to live in my house.

Books I did like on the fair include these that I picked up for Colin, Leviathan and Homer Figg.  So far he has read Homer Figg, under protest mind you, although after he got into it, we had to pry it from his hands to get him to go to sleep.  He has just started Leviathan, so I'll let you know later what he thought of that.

Natalie is a series kind-of girl, and right now her series is Geronimo Stilton, so we had to get a pile of those for her. Geronimo Stilton is an interesting series for the early chapter book reader.  Apparently Italian in original origin, these books spend as much if not more effort on the visual appeal of the book as they do in the storytelling.   If it uses the word sizzling, sizzling will be red, with flames coming out of it, fonts and colors and typography used all along to advance the story.  These stylistic choices make the book a little more fun to read, and a little more appealing to those reluctant to take on a picture-free lengthy chapter book.  They are full color and there are now many books in the series, which means that if they engage your child, lucky you, you have books for months to choose from!  Most are short, but there are two newer longer books, The Kingdom of Fantasy and The Quest for Paradise.  There is also a newer sub-series, for those who prefer a heroine to a hero - or multiple heroines even, the Thea Stilton series.

Lauren is much harder to shop for, her tastes running more of a moving target.  She is reading Big Nate right now, but I also picked up a couple others that I thought she might like, including the below.

Each of these is a smaller chapter book, with intriguing main characters, and the occasional illustration.  All third to fourth grade reading levels.  Hopefully some of them will get read!

In picture books, they had one of my favorites, Library Lion, as well as Library Mouse, both lovely stories about the roles of these animals in their local libraries.

Another delightful illustrated book that I discovered on the fair was I Need My Monster.

In this tale, a certain boy's monster from under his bed goes on vacation, and both find that life is not complete without the other.  The illustrations of the various substitute monsters are delightful and imaginative, even if the story is somewhat predictable to the jaded reader of children's books.

These are some of the ones that caught my eye.  What has caught your eye lately?