The Scholastic book fair took place from October 28th to November 1st, with the Preuss Librarians holding this event in the glass classroom found in the library. The fair contained many items for sale, including a variety of books for students and small items like pens and fidgets. 

Scholastic, a book publisher, supplies items for the book fair, leaving the librarians with limited options.

“Because there has been a huge push in the publishing field to represent diverse authors, we get a fairly decent amount of titles by diverse authors.  There are some we just can’t get because the authors are published by other publishers, not Scholastic,” expresses Ms. Nance, a librarian at Preuss.

Students who attended this event noticed the more mature themes in the books, rather than children books many would see in elementary school’s book fair, but students agreed that this book fair was like others.

“I’ve attended many of the other book fairs. The only difference that I noticed was that there were different types of books than what they usually have such as child books and cookbooks which I never really noticed before,” states Reem Faqi (‘28) 

Some of the students had the opportunities to go to the book fair throughout the days and during the week.

“I went with my advisory class so it was very packed there. There were many students at first but they all began to leave after looking around,” said Faqi (‘28).

While the recent book fair was promoted towards the students, there were some aspects about the book fair that received mixed feedback from students.

“I think some of the prices are reasonable and some are absurd …I don’t think any student would be spending that much on a certain book. There are many books with crazy discounts like $3 which you wouldn’t be able to get at many places,” said Faqi (‘28) “If I could suggest one change it would be to not add expensive books.”

Even with some of the criticism, the librarians believe this year’s book fair was a success. They were pleased to see many classes and students come throughout the week, especially during lunch or advisory.

“We do not really have any challenges because we have been hosting this fair for over 17 years and really have the process down,” comments Ms. Nance. “This year I feel it has been a huge success, mostly in profit. We earned more than $500,000 more than last year. We also had more classes visiting the book fair this year than last year.”

After the 2024 book fair the librarians were confident in their work but saw that they did not need much changes for the book fair, but are still open for new changes in the future.

“As to the future, not sure I see much evolution, again we have been running our fair for quite a while and what we have seems to work pretty well. I have looked at other vendors, but because our school is on the smaller side we never qualify to host,” said Ms. Nance.

Ms. Nance means that our school site is too small compared to others to have a larger book fair.

Overall, this year’s book fair has been proven as a good experience for the students, enabling them to have fun with their friends while also taking an interest in books. 

“The book fair was a success because I feel like there were more people going this year and buying a lot of stuff,” states Shani Hussein (‘28).

“My favorite part of the book fair was looking at the books with my friends. We saw lots of interesting books and picked out things we would like for each other. I would say that we were all pleased with what we got so it was a success,” said Faqi (‘28).