I agree with you that books shouldn't be censored because of a person's like or dislike. Unless it is by the child's parent, of course.

otay! My misinterpretation. (wink, wink).

BUT... I do know some people do knock these titles. I have actually heard it in my own schools. Some of these people, though, believe they have the right to not put books like that out based soley on the fact that they don't like them. The thing is that it is up to each parent to decide what is ok for a child to read. I have had a volunteer parent put a couple of titles back in the boxes because they felt they were inappropriate (Capt. Underpants was one of them). I took them right back out and told them it is not up to them to decide what a child can or cannot purchase. Of course if there were ever a book that was so out there that no child should purchase it in a school especially, we would not hesitate to take it off the shelf. I am talking about sexual overtones, extreme violence and things of that nature.

Sorry I hijacked the thread everyone.

Harry Potter, Spongebob and Captain Underpants? If that is going to inspire children to read and learn to enjoy reading-even laugh at life's silly antics via the Underpants series and Spongebob bring it on.

Backhoed,

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I wasn't knocking these titles...I was merely stating that they are very popular titles, and Usborne doesn't have the rights to them. [img]smile.gif[/img]

There are two other bookfair companies in the Chicagoland area. Personalized Book Fairs and Wickles Book Fairs. Wickles brings all their books in boxes and schools supply tables to display them. Personalized is more like Scholastic in that they have rolling cases to display books. Both companies have a much better selection of books and a lot less junk!

Personalized was at PTO Conference last year in Chicago. Did not see them this year : (

Our spring fairs are buy one get one free. I am quite positive that the kids and parents are not concerned so much with the quality of the paper(I have never seen a book with bad paper) but more about buying affordable books.

I have to agree with this.

We do 2 Book Fairs (Scholastic) a year. One in the fall, and a BOGO in the spring. Because we don't run it as a *fundraiser*, we take the vouchers and use them to buy supplies for our classrooms, the school, and of course the library.

We also use the credits to give each child a "welcome back" book in the fall, a book at Christmas, and a book at the end of the year. Books aren't cheap, and we couldn't give each child 3 nice books/year without those credits.

Any company is going to have good & bad aspects. If the negatives outweigh the positives, then by all means find another avenue!

I guess it really does boil down to WHY you want to have a book fair. We do it to get books into the hands of our kids, not to make money.

HTH!

I agree. Ours is a philosophy of getting more books into the kids' hands. I mentioned on another thread recently that we (PTO) also buy each student a reading book at our elementary fair. And Capt. Underpants is, for some reading levels, a good book to get a kid interested in reading SOMETHING. It is a step in the right direction for an avid PS2'er. Our elem. fair runs seven days in order to allow each class time to get in to shop. It is a lot of work, but it's worth it. Kids do get excited over books!