Do you not like books? Whether your answer was yes or no, I don’t blame you, because regardless of your feelings, you should still be appalled by a current problem in our school. That is the degeneration of an event meant to uplift the entire student body, but has been reduced to a cartoon that sells nothing but 1st-half-of-Lower-School cartoons. What am I talking about?! The Scholastic Book Fair! Book fairs are meant to serve the entire school. They are meant to have books for all ages, of all levels, and to bring a community together. But instead, we are struck by something half-hearted: a metaphorical “you are too old to enjoy the Book Fair” sign, a “you are too old to enjoy the Book Fair” half of the Wonderspace. In the following paragraphs, I will explain, first, exactly what the issues and some positive aspects of the fair are, and second, how I can and will remedy them to the benefit of all at no cost to the school. I will raise the sign to the heights of parents and teachers with notches for every grade if only I am allowed to.
Starting with the flaws and positives of the fair as it is. There are 3 flaws and 1 positive that I believe need to be mentioned to assemble a better fair. This isn’t about tearing down their fair, well, it is about criticizing it in part, but it is primarily about offering a better one. Starting with Flaw 1: It is directed at one audience and not the whole school. A book fair should be designed to bring a community together and have offerings for all who come; ours does not. It targets almost exclusively the youngest of our students. This isn’t a bad thing, but the books for the young should come with those for the old: it should be a mix to make it fair to junior highers, high schoolers, parents, and even teachers!
Flaw 2: It doesn’t sell a wide enough variety of books. This ties in with Flaw 1, but the main addition is the absence of genre variety. They’re all bedtime stories or 5th-grade-and-below adventures. To its credit, there is a “Teen-Reads” section, but it’s roughly one foot wide and consists only of 6th-grade Booktok or Wattpad romances. These books do not speak to almost any high school students and, in fact, talk down to them, especially since they are mostly directed at girls, saying that there’s only romance and poorly written ones at that.
Finally, Flaw 3 is that it’s inaccessible because of timing. Students can only shop at it if they go during lunch or, in the case of the JH, in the morning. This dissuades students from going because they get caught up hanging out with their friends or eating in on itself, and forget or decide it’s not worth it. You may say this is unlikely to be such a big deal, but you lose track of time with your friends, I know it. I do too, it’s ok. If your mom gave you Book Fair money, but if you heard what you did from the other Flaws and can’t fit in, you won’t go.
And now for the single, yet beautiful, positive; it’s an event designed to get people into reading. That means an obscene amount, and if it’s just lower schoolers, that’s progress. But I think we can take it further, take books and reading to everyone.
Moving forward, here’s how I would do it to prove factually that I could do it better. Starting with how it would be set up, and then with how I would acquire the supplies. Before anything, 40% of the money would go to the school, and the rest would go to repaying the book costs; this IS a fundraiser. How would I do it, in steps? When it finally happened, I’d set up either on the road in front of campus or by the front office. I would be set up in the mornings, 7:20 to 8:00, and in the after-school hours, 2:50 to 3:20. I’d completely staff it myself. Second, I’d acquire several boxes of books, put them spine-up, and set them up for people to look through with price tags on Post-Its. And third, I’d find a teacher willing to loan me a table to set up a small register I have and maybe some books on it.
In conclusion, the current book fair is incredibly flawed and should be changed to include other grades and their interests. And it can and will change if it is given the permission to, so please permit me to. If you don’t have the power to help me make that change, then I at least hope you’ve heard me out and been swayed by my message.
