Scholastic Book Fair: Story Laboratory

My last 2 weeks have been consumed with planning and running a Scholastic Book Fair at my children’s school.  I was co-chair with another mom at the school, so we had to come up with a plan for the room, do some decorating, and run the book fair with some help from more parent volunteers at the school.

I love book fairs, I have for a long time.  But, I never realized how much work goes into them!  Scholastic has a great system.  They deliver cases full of books that you open and push up cardboard displays from behind.  Then, they send more books in boxes for you to display on tables, as well as an assortment of pencils, pens, erasers, bookmarks, posters, and other items.  This was the part that took the longest, putting out all the extra items.  It took about 4 hours for the 2 of us to get it all set up, plus the 2 hours I spent in the morning decorating the window and door.

Here are some pictures of it all!

First, the entrance to the book fair.  The spring theme was Story Laboratory, so we wanted to create a science lab feel for the room.  I used aluminum foil to cover the door.  I didn’t quite use a box of 75 sq ft, which cost me $2.88.  Then, I had yellow caution tape from car seat check events that I do, so I put that on both the door and the window.  Next, I got 2 neon green poster boards for $.77 each, $1.54 total, to create the green slime.  The sign on the door I created in PowerPoint (I couldn’t access our chairperson’s toolkit yet to get to the signs Scholastic has to download and print) and says “CAUTION: READING AHEAD”.  Add a roll of packing tape for $2.50 to tape it all up, and decorations cost me $7 total!

Photo courtesy of Sister Carol, school principal

Next, pictures from as you walk in the door and around the room to see all the cases and tables of books and other goodies.  There was a lot!  Oh, and the board with Teacher Wish Lists I have a separate picture of since we didn’t have it out on the table yet, it was on the table with the posters on the floor in front of it.

Scholastic also sends cash registers for the event, and we could accept cash, check, or credit/debit cards.  Here I am in a lab coat and goggles ringing up a customer on our first day during a school open house.  The lab coats I bought were 3M disposable lab coats in size 2X that were $4.07 each on Amazon, and the goggles were Hot Max safety goggles, which at the time were $2.90 each on Amazon, but it looks like the price has gone up.

Photo courtesy of Sister Carol, school principal

The register also tracks all sales, so you can run a report each day of sales and merchandise sold, so you can make sure your drawer is correct and order more items that are selling well.  At the end, you can run a cumulative report to tell you total sales, and also breakdown cash, check, and credit sales.  This makes it really easy to submit the final reports and payment to Scholastic!

So, at the end of the 2 weeks, I’m exhausted from all the work, but the kids’ faces as they came through the book was definitely worth it! I worked the book fair almost all week before and after school, and as I walked in each day, I heard from about every kid I passed, “Are you opening the book fair now?  I have something I want to get!”.  ANYTHING to encourage reading!  Although, being there every day, we did more than our part to monetarily support the book fair!  I think I bought something every day.  I’m already looking forward to next year, and now that I know what to expect, I’m hoping we can make it even better!

Edited on February 3 to add a picture of the Teacher Wish List board.

Tags: book fair, books, reading, Scholastic