Our middle grade readers were so excited to shop at book fair. 

Always an amazing selection of books for beginning readers.

Finding great books at Open House.

“Books for All” books for our sister school, Schmalz Elementary.

Our sixth book fair is over and it was our most successful book fair yet. How do I measure the success of our book fair? One measure is sales and by that measure we were very successful. One only need look around the library to see the benefits of the profits, 100’s of books added to our shelves, new rugs, flexible seating, decor and activities. Spend time with me during book  fair week and you’ll hear me say over and over again, “my biggest goal for book fair is to get great books into kids hands.”  And we do, all week long. I  measure the success of the book fair the minute the students come in to preview.  They look around the library exclaiming with the delight the books they want to add to their lists including classics, previous Newbery Award books and new popular titles.  They greet familiar books like old friends.  Yes, they are excited about the books with necklaces and teeth however, they are even more excited about the quality books on the shelves.  Parents shop with their children, talking about books they want to read and books they’ve already read.  My favorite phrase to over hear at book fair; “I read this when I was a kid”!  We are building a reading community with every event we have. 

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to help set up and take down.  It’s amazing to watch the library transform into a bookstore however it requires a lot of muscles and time.  Thank you also to our many library volunteers who helped with preview, purchases and restocks. It’s an exhausting and fun week and we couldn’t do it without everyone of you!