The second grade teacher said she’d totes do Scholastic, just like the K teacher did last year.
I tend to drop somewhere around $200/month on Scholastic when we get the flyers. Otherwise I don’t generally buy books any more. (People buy books for me from Amazon. I’m kinda itching to buy some myself.)
DC1 has really gotten into a lot of the series I’ve bought from Scholastic. The Magic Treehouse books have been read 2-3 times, as have the A to Z mysteries. Ze’s really into mysteries now, so ze devoured Cam Jansen and Jigsaw Jones and Nate the Great, even though they don’t take very long to read (I think 20 min or so for the Cam Jansens). Ze really wants the Calendar Mysteries and the Patriotic Mysteries (or whatever they’re called) by the same author as the A to Z mysteries. And, you know, more books.
Ze still has plenty of books ze hasn’t read, it is true. Even books at hir reading level and (in theory) interest level, though no more mysteries right now.
What have we been doing instead? Saturday mornings while DH and DC2 snooze, we hit the library. They don’t have more than one copy of most anything and generally stuff is checked out, but DC1 has been finding things to read in hir series of interest, even if out of order.
So, the dilemma– should I ask the teacher when we’ll be getting Scholastic flyers? As soon as we get a flyer I will start spending large sums of money because I’m a total addict. I want to buy more books, and I wanna buy them cheap. (And there’s totes still room in DC1′s second bookcase.) But also… each month we delay that’s $200 or so I don’t spend. This year we can afford my habit. Next year, maybe not.
October 15, 2012 at 4:54 am
Go for it! Next year is next year and what better to spend your disposable income on than books for your kid- that will be passed down to your next kid!
At what age (kiddo, not you) did you start buying Scholastic books? Are they cheaper if you can buy them through school? Is that the only way you can buy them?
October 15, 2012 at 7:00 am
We started buying them when DC1′s preschool started doing Scholastic (so the year before K for us, though the teacher was a bit flakey and didn’t always get the orders in on time). They are much cheaper through the school (~$3/book, though there is a range). You can now buy them directly from scholastic but they’re more expensive.
October 15, 2012 at 5:19 am
Do you use the hold feature at your library for DC1′s books? And what about hitting up local used book stores? Sounds like some of those are popular series these days, which should be easy enough to find.
I am all about scholastic, but I am also all about not buying books that won’t be read multiple times. As a kid, we did a lot of library, used bookstores, and thrift stores for books. And those all helped me save money on the book buying. Scholastic was saved for some of the harder to find things that I still liked. My mom always set a firm budget then let me work out how to use the budget on the scholastic stuff. Good early money training, I might add.
October 15, 2012 at 6:59 am
The used bookstores (there are two of them, one is a half-priced books) are kind of meh. One of them doesn’t even organize the childrens section so it’s impossible to find anything. Half priced books has about the same prices as Scholastic and actually I haven’t seen these particular series there (oddly, they didn’t have the twilight series when I was looking to buy it for DH’s relatives). I think the used bookstores are more geared towards the college kid population than the kid population.
DC1 does a lot of rereading and DC2 is waiting in the wings to takeover in a few years.
October 15, 2012 at 9:57 am
Half price is really hit or miss. Whenever we go I make a list because I don’t always remember what I want, but I NEVER expect to buy anything because I don’t want to be disappointed. Some of their prices aren’t as good as I’d like. We rarely do well in the kids section there (we have tons of nieces/nephews/friends with kids).
October 15, 2012 at 6:03 am
I’d advise you to get your children hooked on the library now…in a couple of years they won’t touch the books they are reading now and you will be looking to give them away. As they get older the books often get more expensive too. The library is a great habit for them to develop for life!
October 15, 2012 at 6:53 am
I should have mentioned that we’re in a small town in a red state– the library isn’t very good. Far worse than the library in the even smaller town in which I grew up.
October 15, 2012 at 7:20 am
Too bad you don’t have a town dump – our town was too small to have garbage collection, so we had to take a trip to the dump each weekend. There was a section called the “take-it-or-leave-it” and I collected tons of Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew books from there.
October 15, 2012 at 7:21 am
Also – does their school not have a library?
October 15, 2012 at 7:41 am
It does, but its a small private school. They don’t have as many magic treehouse books as we do, for example. Last time DC1 went, ze checked out a magic treehouse book that we already own because they had to check out a book and there wasn’t anything else ze saw of interest. If it’s anything like the school libraries I experienced growing up, I bet they have a lot of 20 and 30 year old books. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but DC isn’t familiar with them. Which reminds me, I should suggest Encyclopedia Brown (they’re being reprinted– I originally read them in ancient first editions at the Uni library). (Since I’m a social scientist and not a humanities prof, I don’t take my kid with me to the humanities library on a semi-regular basis, so DC1 doesn’t really have that option without extra effort from me.)
October 15, 2012 at 10:00 am
The one college uni here as an excellent kid’s book section for the students taking EDU classes. Can you just pop in there and get a few books to take home?
By the time your kids stop reading the books you have now, I’ll have kids and they’ll be ready to read them…maybe we need a bloggy book exchange for all the various ages.
October 15, 2012 at 10:05 am
That’s where I got a lot of my reading when I was young, but parking is a PITA given I’m on another side of campus and my main library is one of the little spin-offs.
October 15, 2012 at 9:34 am
No good alternatives, since I’ve always been fortunate enough to live in towns with great libraries. Although… check and see if your library has an amazon wish list. Sometimes you can buy for a library, and then you (or DC1) gets to be the first to check it out, and gets a bookplate with your name in it. So more books to read, plus a better library for your town. As for suggestions, DC1 might be ready for some of the younger of Lloyd Alexander’s stuff. Try the Vesper Holly series.
October 15, 2012 at 9:49 am
We have the Vesper Holly series (purchased new from Scholastic when I was a lass)! They’re a bit old for DC1 though– the reading level is highish and the print is too small.
I don’t think our library has such an option (I’ve never seen a book plate, and most donations go straight to the booksale as far as I can tell… there’s a premium on newness here), but it sounds like something they *should* do.
October 15, 2012 at 9:39 am
I’m in the “buy the books and donate them later” camp. We get things from our library. Our local branch is OK, not great. Now that my oldest is reading at ~2nd grade level, there are a lot more books for her. They were skimpy on the starting readers. But I still buy, because she likes them. As she gets bored with them/outgrows them, I put them on a higher shelf until her little sister is ready for them. As the little sister outgrows things, we donate to our library, our day care, or the charity that I like. I figure I can afford them, someone has to make writing profitable for authors, and I don’t mind spending my money that way.
October 15, 2012 at 9:58 am
Mmmm books. You make a compelling argument. Our boardbooks are in pretty bad shape at this point (DC1 was a very tactile “reader”, also cheesy), but that may be something to do later with our older kids books. My parents gave a lot of our younger stuff away to a new elementary school library that opened up after my sister went off to college. I also gave a bunch of our early readers to the elementary school I volunteered at when I was in high school.
October 15, 2012 at 10:19 am
I love Scholastic online. I’m not sure you can order direct from Scholastic on your own and still get the free shipping. You could also ask a friend to piggyback on to their kid’s class’ order. Or if you get sick of the flaky late-ordering teacher, you could always offer to be the person who puts in the class’ orders for her – which is how one of the moms at my kids’ preschool contributes to the school – but then you’d probably feel like poking yourself in the eye with a very sharp stick. (We give cash).
Goodwill is a great source for kids’ books – and BTW the local town is super small. We usually see tons of Boxcar Children, Magic Treehouse, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Lemony Snickets, etc. I use the memo function on my cell phone to keep track of the ones we already have at home.
October 15, 2012 at 10:23 am
The teacher this year isn’t flaky, she just hasn’t given us any scholastic stuff yet. She said she would, but hasn’t yet. I could nudge her to give us some, but haven’t done it, and I’m not sure I should since every month she doesn’t give it, that’s $200 I’m not spending.
October 15, 2012 at 8:13 pm
save that $200 for next year’s Scholastic orders, maybe?
Mine is maybe 6 months ahead of yours – read all the Magic Treehouse this spring, is bored of them now – and really likes Max Finder mystery graphic novels, if you haven’t seen those. They go a little above their reading level with graphic novels sometimes, challenge themselves a little with the words because there are still pictures.
October 15, 2012 at 11:15 am
Our local library is truly glorious, and I’ve always been around good ones. I realize how lucky this is.
As far as making the libraries you have work for you- don’t forget about ILL for the crappy town library, since when working through a series there are specific books you are interested in.
Also, consider calling the uni library and make sure they don’t have a workaround that does not require parking. Sometimes they can inter-office campus “mail” the books to you, sometimes you can pick up books from one library at another location. When I was an undergrad, one of my work-study jobs was being a gopher for faculty books and articles. Granted, no one used the system for books for their kid, but I don’t think anyone would have minded.
Honestly, as far as the Scholastic goes, I’d set a budget significantly <$200/month and nudge the teacher. If DC1 is old enough (and it sounds like maybe that's the case), I'd let DC1 pick the books and see how the budget works. It's a good type of practice for budgeting, I suspect (my parents did that with some used book stores for me, although what I remember was more often working within a budget for my art supply birthday/Xmas presents- now *that* was awesome).
October 15, 2012 at 11:25 am
That last paragraph sounds like an awesome idea. DC1 gets a $100 budget and gets to pick from that. You save $100, and your kid gets to practice figuring out how various purchases add up.
October 15, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Where’s the fun (for mommy) in that? :/
October 15, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Don’t ask her for it until January. Then it’s next year and you’ll be able to afford it bc you didn’t spend it this year.
October 15, 2012 at 5:42 pm
But also, I’m with Cloud on the someone needs to support print authors and publishers and if you have the $ and shelf space, go for it.
October 15, 2012 at 6:26 pm
oh, we’re on the school year calendar here… DH doesn’t leave his job until May
The problem is if it doesn’t get spent this year it’ll end up going someplace boring like retirement or mortgage next year. It’s a mental accounting thing.
October 15, 2012 at 6:06 pm
ZOMG! I remember those flyers from school! :D
October 15, 2012 at 8:53 pm
I think I’m starting that habit. Just got the first Scholastic and plopped down $20. I can totally see a book buyer in the making!
October 15, 2012 at 10:23 pm
It’s good stuff. And it’s hard to buy elsewhere after.
October 16, 2012 at 10:12 am
I loooooooved the Scholastic time of year. Glad to know they are still around doing their thing. When my sister & I were in elementary school, my parents were pretty much broke, but they still managed to get us a few new books via Scholastic. I still have some of them. :-)
October 16, 2012 at 10:13 am
Same with my parents. Scholastic has such good prices. And paperbacks of things you can generally only get hardback elsewhere.
October 16, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Does the school benefit? Like they get free books with each certain number of books purchased by the students? If so, that’s another plus for spend the money on scholastic books vs boring other places to use the money.
October 16, 2012 at 2:16 pm
They do!
October 16, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Scholastic has warehouse sales a few times a year. See if there’s one in your area. Books are half Scholastic price OR LESS. You need to be an educator to go.
I bought from the warehouse sales and donated cash to the schools (because they DO get a cut of the sales). My sales had a $20 box special.
Win-Win
October 18, 2012 at 9:59 am
Interesting discussion. I hardly ever buy books from Scholastic. My kid is a voracious reader with a huge range of interests (she whips through short books in less than a day and then works on huge things like Harry Potter. also a lot of nonfiction) and even as a bookish person with a large library it doesn’t seem worth spending that way. We’ve got tons of books that she rereads or we’re saving for the little one… that is, most of the things I’d be inclined to buy from scholastic we already own. She wants a Kindle other other e-reader for her birthday, and that seemed like the most reasonable request she’s had in terms of her desire for technology.
October 18, 2012 at 10:02 am
DC1 loves being allowed to use my kindle and there are a ton of great children’s classics on there for free. All the Oz books, tons of L M Montgomery, and much more.
I kept thinking we’d run out of Scholastic stuff to buy, but we haven’t.
October 19, 2012 at 9:03 am
Ugh my son’s teacher is doing Scholastic. I wish she wouldn’t. My son is the only kid that doesn’t get anything. And he begs me for stuff. :’(
October 19, 2012 at 9:07 am
They generally have a $1 book on each form. Maybe he can save up to buy something himself.
October 19, 2012 at 9:11 am
That’s not a bad idea except the allowances are on hold. He might have some money saved up from when they weren’t.
November 6, 2012 at 8:18 pm
mmmm $222 spent :)