I thought it was the best day of the month: the day the Scholastic book orders came in.

 My teacher would sort the books into piles on the windowsill and hand out slips of paper recording the orders we’d filled out two weeks before, and we’d file by, grabbing the books we’d ordered and taking them back to our desks.  Everybody always ordered at least one book so that they would receive the free poster, generally some cute photo of a baby animal.  Remember?

I had a generous book club budget of ten dollars;  on a good month that would procure five or six books.  The best part, as I remember it, was that there were always a few 99 cent books offered, generally classics; and to stretch my book dollar I never failed to add these onto my order.  In this way I came to read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Sterling North’s Rascal, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.  These were all titles I never would have chosen otherwise.

Like so many things from my childhood, the Scholastic book club has changed, and not for the better.  It’s glitzier, it’s flashier- and it’s not all about the books.

According to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, about one-third of what is offered in your child’s Scholastic flier is not a book.  Instead, your child is being marketed video games, makeup, jewelry, and toys.  In school.  In their “book club” order. [Read more...]