I Miss the Scholastic Book Fair

I liked to read when I was younger but I went through phases between reading a lot of actual books to barely reading at all unless you counted Webkinz forums as reading material but when it came to the Scholastic Book Fair it didn't matter how I felt about reading because despite the name you didn't even have to actually like books between plastic junk reminiscent of arcade prizes straight up video games and electronics and of course actual novels there was guaranteed to be something at the book fair that any kid would like at my school when the annual book fair rolled around we would take time out of class to go to it and spend our money which already gave it a lot of cool points just for letting kids spend time not doing actual school work but even if you didn't have money to actually buy something half the fun was just looking through all the countless shiny covers and the Wonders they promised to hold inside or even browsing the catalog before the actual fare to scope out the best things to stare at once you were there and once you delved in it really felt surreal and magical because this is what reading is this is what all my teachers are trying to get me to do to look at the world's most tattooed man touch the special pages in a pirate Adventure book and then walk away with a handful of erasers and special pens at the end if a Jonas Brothers biography book is what real literature had been all along then I guess I can see why they wanted us to like it so much and that was the best part despite the Scholastic part in the name maybe suggesting otherwise the book fair felt like an education-free zone so my Jonas Brothers book did qualify as reading even if I wasn't really learning anything besides the fact that their favorite sports were allegedly Wiffle ball and pole vaulting I consumed so much Jonas Brothers content back in the day that I couldn't really tell you if I actually read or owned this book specifically but it almost doesn't really matter because this is just one of many in the Scholastic genre of unofficial unaffiliated 100 pandering quote-unquote biographies written about nearly every popular children's celebrity you can think of I know it's just for legal and liability reasons but I still just find it so funny how these kinds of books always have some sort of sticker on the cover that claims how unauthorized and unofficial their book is it's just that they display it in a way that makes it look as though it's a feature instead of something that almost completely discounts its credibility I feel like the intention is that most kids will see the 100 percent and think that it means something good there were probably some officially licensed books like this also thrown into the mix but they all kind of had the same level of quality to them so it didn't really change much also it's kind of unreal related but there was apparently a periodical that was published by Scholastic 2 and in my searches I found this which aside from being a bad math pun also features a quote from a real Jonas brother about math I don't know that I would have been convinced to actually like math if I saw this as a kid but I'll tell you that it definitely wouldn't have helped that the quote was from Kevin sorry it was mostly The Sideburns but enough about pole vaulting and Kevin Jonas math endorsements similar to the celebrity biographies of the book fair were the books that also featured celebrities on the cover but were actually based on the different movies and TV shows that the celebrities were from and they were called Junior novels or novelizations really almost any kid-friendly piece of media you could think of was probably adapted into a readable book version and for me at least these were some of the most tempting pieces at the book fair but once you cracked into these Junior novels it became very clear that they're not a original books or stories but they're just the movie or show or whatever they're based on but in a watered-down written form there were even sometimes pictures in the middle that were just seemingly random stills from The Source material to make it almost feel like you were watching the real thing looking at these books now it's actually pretty obvious that I shouldn't have expected anything more from them especially because some of the covers are more obvious about what they are than others I want to make it clear though that I'm not bashing the idea of these books I do think this is a great way to get kids interested in reading but despite feeling this way as an adult there's clearly still a part of me that hasn't gotten over how much of a letdown these books seemed once I actually opened them and yet I still read almost every one as far as Original Stories go though there was of course no shortage of these at the book fair and before you scroll down to the comments in advance to get ready to say it if I don't mention your god tier favorite childhood book series I'm sorry sorry I probably never read it myself because I was clearly too preoccupied with trying to read up on the Jonas Brothers so that they could spot me in the crowd at a concert and fall in love with me aside from that special hobby though some Elementary School favorites of mine to read were included in series like guardians of gahul Captain Underpants Diary of a Wimpy Kid Magic Tree House and pretty much every book series written as a diary entry from the perspective of a quirky and sarcastic young girl I did read other books that I feel like were a little more Niche and might not be as well known including Geronimo Stilton A to Z Mysteries and the riot Brothers series and one series that I feel like might be lesser known was the Rainbow Magic series which includes a Collective Book Universe about groups of fairies all centered around a certain theme my introduction to these girls was in the rainbow themed sub-series about seven fairies corresponding to a color in the rainbow that bring color to Fairyland but Jack Frost for some reason splits them up so there's no color rainbow it's broken the plot revolves around two girls that rescue each of the fairies to restore the rainbow and it's about as simple and cheesy as you might expect but I was so invested in the story as a kid that it may as well have been Avengers Infinity War the Rainbow Magic series as a whole does not stop there though any easily discernible theme you can think of there's probably some corresponding fairy related story tied to it we've got weather dance party night baby animals magical animals School subjects and plenty more and wouldn't you know there is a set of books about a special set of Jewel fairy gemstones that have to be retrieved so I guess fairy's Infinity war is Canon after all pretty much every plot line is almost exactly the same the fairies get into some beef with Jack Frost and are either split up or their specific set of correlating magical objects are lost and young girls help the fairies deal with their problems the books are definitely made made with low level readers in mind especially since half the books are taken up by pictures so I can't really fault it for lacking much creativity but I still would have loved to at least see a different villain or something per series because Jack Frost is such a random bad guy for all but one of the themed sets they could have at least named him evilson make hates fairies or something to give him a more versatile fit even though the Rainbow Magic books weren't exactly top tier stories it didn't really matter because I knew I could always find Solace elsewhere some gripping storytelling lovable characters and jaw-dropping plot twists in the best children's book series about a magical Universe including a dark-haired young boy main character not like the other girl's unlikely female companion and the red-haired best friend all fighting to defeat the Ultimate Magic World bad guy no not that one yeah obviously maybe you can tell that I never got into Harry Potter as a kid I read the first book but by that point I was already way more invested in the superior Percy Jackson series I'm convinced that almost everyone had a Greek mythology phase at some point during their childhood and I think it's safe to say that for a lot of us these books were the cause instead of Wands and spell books there were swords disguised as pens and water powers fueled by Poseidon himself the danger and sense of urgency for the heroes to survive and win felt so much more palpable in this series because it wasn't contained to just the Wizarding World and even more specifically kind of just the one school but it spread across the whole world connecting the real world and the Magical with myths and gods and it overall just felt like such an epic adventure I will give the Harry Potter fans some credit though that they definitely got the better movies I I don't even want to talk about it what if you don't want to read any kind of story though what if you don't want to read at all and instead want to just flip through the pictures or touch the pages well then the ology series found at Book Fairs Nationwide may be right for you while these books do technically tell a story and also have a lot of words in them instead of only pictures if you are anything like me the words on the pages may as well have not existed because I did not look at them for even a second for me it was all about the tactile immersion theology book series features 14 different books all written from the perspective of some Explorer or scholar writing in a journal and detailing their adventures and findings related to a certain theme per book each Book theme is something either fantasy related or mythical though so it gives the whole series a real air of mystery but again I honestly barely even remembered that there were words in these books to begin with because along with very creative and descriptive accounts and studies written down there are usually at least one or two different tangible extra pieces per page to really enhance the experience it was usually something paper based like a note or map or a letter just something to spice up the written information like this torn piece of a treasure map in the pirate ology book but other times it was something more unique like the textured sample of totally real life mummy cloth in egyptology or a feather ballpoint pen I mean real feather quill in the mythology book and I'm sure this book is also to blame for the other half of the Greek mythology Fanatics that just appeared suddenly during Elementary School who didn't already fall into the Percy Jackson category and if there wasn't something tangible to actually move there were still a lot of embossed details to touch and pictures and illustrations that were just interesting to look at even the covers of these books often had some sort of tactile physical element to them I personally liked to rub the little plastic tools on the front of my sister's mythology book good times one of my favorite Parts about these books though is that they seemed to inspire plenty of other books like them which sure isn't technically an ology books feature but I'm glad that I wasn't limited to just the few in the series I actually had an ology esque tactile and secret filled book based on High School Musical which I'm quickly learning is a franchise that a lot of my childhood anecdotes relate to from what I can remember this was written more as a fun facts and behind the scenes kind of book rather than a detailed Adventure Journal though I definitely still would have loved to read one of the characters diary entries detailing the Wildcat experience my sister also had a Harry Potter behind the scenes type book like this too and even though we know how I feel about it I still also liked to sneak into her room and pull out the little pieces when she wasn't looking another book that probably had some words in it that I definitely never actually read was the classic every present book fair staple the Guinness Book of World Records I don't know about anyone else but at my school at least if you bought this book it was like you bought a one-way ticket to a popular kid city even if you weren't very popular or even well liked before once you had this baby sitting on your desk everyone wanted to be friendly and ask you for a chance to look at it part of this book's status came from how big it was as everyone knows the bigger the book The Cooler it must be and also because it was usually one of the more expensive titles at the fair making it harder to get if you were only allowed to buy a copy of Amber the orange fairy to continue the riveting rainbow fairy Saga but rainbow fairies and to an extent even touchy grabby things and theology books somewhat paled in comparison to the content that was actually in a world records book although it wasn't necessarily made for child readers it had just enough weird wacky wild and wonderful to capture any kid's attention and as as a bonus you only really had to read the subtitles by a picture to gain most of what there was to know so it was easy to just Breeze right through the pages there were records relating to anything from space to sports to animals but most kids I knew myself included weren't really interested in something like the highest density of crabs we wanted to see the crazy stuff show me the world's largest fingernails the tiniest men the fastest sandwich made by feet a guy who eats cockroaches the most tattooed and pierced people and Weirdos riding bikes underwater why would they do that that doesn't make any sense if the Guinness book wasn't your thing though or just too wildly expensive for a book that mostly encourages kids to do reckless things to get their face in a book there were still even more books at the book fair that were still technically reading material but were definitely different from a typical story based novel anything from joke books to Niche how-to manuals to a lot of spy stuff and here's a little spy video recommendation elaborating on that two facts and stats books that didn't necessarily include guys throwing stoves or putting snakes in their mouth but yet another great part of the book fair is that if it wasn't the reading but the books themselves that you weren't into then you didn't have to buy books if there's any one thing you can say about me it's that I love trinkets just tiny little pieces of stuff in the form of stickers and little animals and fortunately for me despite the name the book fair had no shortage of anything along these lines to catch my eye I'm talking pens pencils erasers bookmarks mini notebooks coloring books and calculators that looked like a chocolate bar and also smell just like the distant memory of a dream a guy had about looking at a chocolate bar once and that's just the items that were available on the floor the Scholastic catalog would always have even more to offer in this department some of these mostly useless pieces of junk were sold as a highly coveted bonus item with a book something to enhance the reading experience or otherwise just be somewhat related to The Book theme looking at these little extra features now I'm wondering why they seemed so desirable so much so that I would ask for a book just to never read it and get my hands on that sweet sweet piece of bonus plastic I mean most of them probably added an extra value of about 20 cents when the items were paper-based some kind of cheap jewelry or keychain or something really cool like a rock talk or a pair of plastic bottles I guess little toys and trinkets are just the kind of thing that kids always gravitate towards but this time you could justify it to your parents more by saying look it's in a book catalog it's learning or something and it's the thrill of tricking your parents was half of the fun it was usually a little harder to justify the things that were bookless and just straight up toys though for some reason the book fair and the catalog especially were also filled with anything from science experiment to prank kits to makeup and Beauty sets and if it wasn't an activity set it was some kind of digital organizer or PDA specifically in varying shapes and sizes all with some kind of touchscreen to blow a 2000s kid's mind or something else completely separate from the main Book theme like posters Standalone plastic toys or full-on video games the posters ranged from generic non-branded pictures of common interests like animals or car cars or zombies sharks ninjas though there were also plenty of franchise posters from anything from boy bands to TV shows I'm fairly sure that I got yet another High School Musical related piece of merchandise at a book fair in the form of a poster that I hung right above my bed and said good night to before I went to sleep the more I talk about these movies the more I realize how special my interest was I don't know how they Justified the posters as far as being educational or useful in some way but they were always there the electronics at least seemed a little easier to rationalize because while the cheap electronic organizer I somehow convinced my mom to buy me was probably mostly used to store the phone numbers of like the three people I knew and Mark random dates on the digital calendar I think it also had a calculator function so there you go math Kevin would be so proud I still don't think that these items really had much of a place at a book fair but they are still arguing probably part of what made it seem so fun it was like stepping into a toy store with free reign to touch all the things you want and blow your parents money on a dolphin book just for the stuffed animal that came with it I definitely wasn't complaining when I was younger and I still got my fair share of reading in with all of the shelves filled with actual books so I guess the toys weren't too big of a distraction though I definitely still told people to smell my calculator way more than I should have even with all of its questionable aspects the school book fair Still Remains a treasured memory for me and plenty of other people both readers and non-readers alike from an adult perspective I do really like that there weren't only story books but books covering a variety of interests and reading levels to start kids off on a reading Journey even if it only began with touching Pages or looking at the pictures inside I'm not quite as big of a reader now as I was when I was a kid and crushing on Percy Jackson but anytime I remember the piles of colorful covers all lined up on a plastic tablecloth it makes me want to pick up another book and start again foreign a huge thank you to B22 Bradley T Kaylee Geary bunzo Dylan Webb Hayden Campbell Joe Cheeseman Johann ake Kevin Evans Mark Kent Mr pants and we paper Sam pixel puppy Sarah the Goomba mattress Theodore Nicola Wireless unan omondore and the rest of my patrons for supporting me congratulations you've all been featured in the dream jelly Book of World Records for breaking the record as the best patrons ever you don't get a prize or anything sorry [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Dream Jelly

Views: 114,959

Keywords: scholastic, scholastic books, scholastic book fair, book fair, school book fair, book fair books, ology books, ology series, ology book series, dragonlogy, mythology, pirateology, percy jackson, percy jackson books, rainbow magic, rainbow magic series, fairies books, fairy books, rainbow fairy books, rainbow fairies books, guinness world record, guinness world records, world records book, guinness world records book, book fair catalog, dork diaries, magic treehouse, i spy

Id: 0DjYBJk3nMI

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023