Fostering a Reading Culture

Book Fairs: The Past, Present and Future

As we descended into the Covid Pandemic, one of the many heart breaking cancellations was that of the beloved book fair.  In terms of fostering a reading culture in our school, book fairs are used as anchor points throughout the year to build excitement in the community and to showcase the joy that books bring children (and adults!).  Miller and Bass describe leadership in libraries as being, “about recognizing the opportunities that abound in school libraries and making the most of them to bring about changes that will empower and support your students as learners” (Miller & Bass, 2019, p. 11) and book fairs are a tool that creates these opportunities.

Our first fall term back in 2020 saw many, if not all I assume, schools scrambling to figure out how to host a book fair virtually.  There was radio silence on the side of the Grand Vizier that is Scholastic Inc. I had reached out to them to see what would be possible and I did not hear back from them for almost 2 months.  They too were scrambling.

I imagine it took many IT teams and epic stretches of the imagination to cobble together what became the first ever virtual book fair in my school’s history.  The disappointment was palpable in the classrooms.  The students had to resign themselves yet again to what everyone kept refereeing to as “the new normal” that felt anything but.  Even the most staunch of big-book-company-critics among the staff and parents were lamenting the change in implementation.  However, the minds at Scholastic figured it out and we proceeded with a very successful fair from the comfort of our own couches.  The experience really showed me, and certain aforementioned critics, that the jolt that students get out of these book fairs is really important, year after year, to incite devoted readers and inspire reluctant ones.

As a new teacher librarian 5 years back being introduced to our school’s collection, it was brought to my attention that the shelves and book spines were teaming with that trademark red square and the emblazoned ‘S’.  Our school had been hosting 2 Scholastic book fairs per year and accumulating credits for future purchases while our library account was in arrears due to a lack of library budget.  The complaints, from the teachers who voiced them, were that the books were not great quality and the content was sometimes vapid.  I took this to heart and when a savvy teacher approached me with the idea of dropping one of the fairs and replacing it with a local bookstore, none other than the storied Russell Books, I jumped at the opportunity.

Russell Books offers credit with their store in exchange for book fairs.  They can truly order anything and have an insane amount of back stock in their various warehouse locations around the city.  I began to think of them as my own private Amazon without the guilt and it felt good to be connecting within our community.

During the pandemic, Scholastic was able to rustle (pun intended and achieved!) up a virtual book fair, but Russell Books was not.  They have too much random stock, as a used book seller, to have enough of a handle on their inventory to offer lists virtually. To their credit, they did eventually figure that out and were able to offer a virtual experience. The pandemic gave both companies the urgency they needed to become more accessible online and have thus become virtual tools for schools.

The brightest light in our virtual book fair journey was Munro’s Books.  Munro’s virtual infrastructure was already strong pre-pandemic. When it became known that Munro’s was offering hybrid fairs, I was beyond excited.  Munro’s had been my favourite book store since I was a kid (who had only visited Victoria a handful of times from Alberta).  Their inventory was beautifully displayed, as it always is, on their website (if you have never shopped online there, I recommend it very highly – do it now, especially their Teachers and Schools page) and that made it seamless for shoppers.

The hybrid option, as we were moving into more vaccinated times, was that you could physically shop at Munro’s (any excuse!) and attribute your purchase to the school in order to build credit.  I had devoted parents emailing in photos of their children standing outside Munro’s with their new books and journals.  The credit we accumulated lasted over two years and I was able to do frequent ordering and visiting for pick-ups from Munro’s.  Delightful!  This is effective in fostering a reading culture at the school because when the students and teachers are asking for new books (be it large or small orders) I am able to surprise them with how quickly I can acquire them.

In conducting these experiments with in-person, local and virtual book fairs the shelves in our library are showing less red and I take a lot of pride in that.  It is important to have nourishing, immersive content on the shelves so that I can “offer a safe place where they (students) can explore and discover who they are through books” (Miller & Bass, 2019, p. 20).  I prefer not being beholden to Scholastic even though, I will admit, their fairs are by far the favourite for the students: it’s the merch!  I had one student say to me that he was sorry that the Russell Books book fair was such a flop.  I just smiled.  The Russell’s fair raised just as much money as the Scholastic one did, but because of the lack of toys and posters it felt different to him.

As we move forward with the year and our lives, we are back to our regularly scheduled fairs with Scholastic in the fall and Russell Books in the spring, but I have also decided to keep the Munro’s hybrid fair.  I would have thought there would be no room for virtual fairs because of the demand for in-person book-buying experiences.  However, the relationships I have developed with the people at that store, the ease of the shopping experience for otherwise vulnerable people online, the 20% discount for educators and their ordering power is too good to give up.  Book fairs are evolving and we need local and virtual experiences to continue to offer them to our school communities to bring the books to the kids.

Works Cited

Miller, S., & Bass, W. (2019).  Leading from the Library: Help your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. International Society for Technology in Education. 

All photos used are mine with permission.