A few weeks ago, I drove by my old elementary school, and something caught my eye and, admittedly, made my heart flutter: the Scholastic Book Fair truck parked out front. I felt a little pang of jealousy for those eight, nine, and ten-year-olds who would soon rush off to the gym or library and have access to the rows of freshly-printed paperbacks and all the fun items that accompany them. Do they still have Lisa Frank pencils and erasers and those inspirational posters with a cute puppy with its paws on a tree limb that say something like "Just hang in there," I wondered.
I kept driving, but my thoughts returned to my childhood. Books were a major part of my life. When I was around that particular age, my mom would get me started on these random series she found when shopping at Kroger, which had a small book section in those days. First, there was "The Pee-Wee Scouts," which she and I read together. Then there was "The Sleepover Friends" — I think that was the first series I read on my own. Eventually, my BFF, Melissa, introduced me to "The Babysitters Club," and I discovered a "Boxcar Children" book in the school library one day that led me to seek out every other one in that series.
I remember one summer, my dad would stop by the local bookstore to buy me the next "Babysitters Club" book occasionally, just sigh and roll his eyes when he got home from work the next day, and I'd already finished it and asked for another. We didn't have a lot of money back then, but my parents made sure I had books on demand, even if that simply meant weekly trips to the local library. That's how I discovered Lois Lowry's "Anastasia Krupnik" series.
So like every other millennial or Gen Xer with bibliophile tendencies, the Scholastic Book Fair was often the best part of my school year. They'd send a little leaflet home with a list of all the books they had for sale, and my mom and I would look through it the night before and circle the ones that sounded the best. The next day, she'd send me to school with $20, and I'd inevitably skip the books we circled and buy something completely different. The two or so dollars I had leftover went toward Lisa Frank knick-knacks and puppy posters.
Most of the time, every single one of my friends and I would go home and beg our parents for more cash for a second round. Sometimes we got it; sometimes we didn't. Sometimes, my own mom would give me a few extra dollars in exchange for some work around the house. For many of us, it was a first lesson in capitalism, budgeting, and prioritizing our spending. It wasn't just about reading; it gave us a little bit of independence.
Seeing that truck outside the school that day led to some research. I was actually surprised to learn that Scholastic still does book fairs and even more surprised to learn that they've been around longer than I have.
But I can't help but wonder what they're like today or whether kids get just as excited about them now as we did back in the 1980s and 1990s. Most kids I know these days have their noses stuck in a screen rather than a book. They're watching YouTube, playing video games, or reading social media quick hits instead of chapter books. And for the kids who do still want books, what is available to them? Is it the same wholesome experience it was for my generation, or are the shelves lined with woke stories about boys who think they are girls? It sounds like the latter.
In 2023, Scholastic said it would stop allowing schools to exclude or separate collections of books on controversial topics, like LGBTetc. stuff and racism. The company, which had allowed this up until this point, apparently said, "We understand now that the separate nature of the collection has caused confusion and feelings of exclusion."
I feel for common-sense parents raising kids in this day and age — even the book fair isn't safe from far-left ideology. Back in the day, my parents would have jerked me out of the entire school system if they started teaching me about gender and sexuality when I was in second or third grade. I'd do the same if I had kids in public schools right now.
I also feel for the kids. Even if the book fair still exists, it sounds like it's not quite as magical as it used to be. Hopefully, I'm wrong about that. The book fair was such a big deal in those days that many people of my generation find themselves chasing that same spark it gave us all these decades later. We even have memes about it, and I promise you that we will like them every single time they make the rounds on social media.
So how do we do it? How do we find that high again?
I guess walking into a Barnes & Noble or a cute independent bookstore does it for me to an extent. Unfortunately, my mom isn't around to load me up with cash, but the scent of new books, the thrill of scanning the covers for something intriguing, and knowing that the shelves are filled with tens of thousands of little worlds in which you can get lost kind of hits the same way the book fairs did back then. For the people who were just there for the posters and pencils, someone told me that subscription boxes might give you a similar feeling of euphoria.
As an adult, my love affair with books has remained strong... even when I'm not always reading them. In college, I worked for Borders for three years, and I put that employee discount to good use. Last year, when I lost my job and was rethinking my financial choices, I realized I had a pretty bad Amazon addiction. I was ordering multiple books a week but reading very few of them. I've got a "to-be-read" pile with hundreds, if not thousands, of books in it. Well, three piles in three different rooms. Oops.
For a while, I just didn't have time. I was taking care of my sick parents, then I went back to school, and subsequently traveled a lot. Or so that's what I told myself.
A couple of weeks ago, I knocked my phone into my swimming pool, and within 48 hours, I'd already read an entire novel. It was eye-opening — the first thing I'd read in months. As it turns out, maybe I have plenty of time to read when I want to find it. I probably did all along. I just had too many other shiny objects vying for my attention. Now, I'm making a conscious effort to opt for a book over scrolling Instagram, playing some dumb digital game, or trying to keep up with everything going on all the time.
When I finished my first novel in record time after the Great Phone Mishap of 2025, I went to one of those massive piles of books I haven't read yet and just randomly picked eight or so. I stacked them next to my bed and grabbed the first one. Something else I've noticed about not having a phone for a period of time is that your senses seem stronger — you're more alive in the moment, or so was my experience. The way the spine cracked, the way the pages still smelled new, the idea that I was about to enter a place I'd never been — it almost gave me the same cozy yet exhilarating feeling I used to get when book fair week rolled around as a kid.
And I realized maybe that's it — maybe that's how you stop chasing and actually find the high of the Scholastic Book Fair. It's not about being in a certain place or living in a specific decade. It's about slowing down, stepping away from all the screens, forgetting about your troubles and responsibilities, and just getting lost in a good book or whatever else you loved to do as a child, when technology and the trials and tribulations of adulthood hadn't taken over your life.
