Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Book order day

I've always been a sucker for Scholastic Books.  As a kid I circled everything about football (especially my beloved Oakland Raiders) and animals that appeared in the newsprint catalogs.  My parents indulged my every book-buying request, and I can still remember the thrill of my teacher handing me a huge pile of shrink-wrapped paperbacks with my order form taped to the top.  Heaven.

Now as a mother, I've tried to carry on that tradition, ordering large numbers of books from the fliers and harboring a secret pride when Archer or Cady Gray let me know that their orders were the biggest in the class.  They get books -- and I will always be happy to give them any book they desire -- and their teacher gets books.  Win-win, right?

But there's a new wrinkle this year.  Cady Gray's teacher is sending home the standard kindergarten-first grade level catalog (Seesaw, I think it is).  And the books are simply too elementary for her.  Even the small section of beginning chapter books is stuff she read last year.  What she really wants are the graphic novels and cartoon-illustrated books in Archer's fourth grade Arrow catalog.

No problem on one level -- Archer's book orders have been about 1/3 Cady Gray books for at least a couple of years.  But this is the first time I looked through Cady Gray's catalog and saw absolutely nothing that she would enjoy.  She's left picture books and easy readers behind, and that's what Scholastic is offering through her teacher.

And I feel terrible because I don't want Cady Gray to get nothing when her teacher passes out the book orders.  I don't want her classroom to miss out on the free books they gets when I order.

Maybe I should order a few things and give them away?  But of course I already have plenty of books she's outgrown that we already need to give away.  Does anybody have a solution for this dilemma?

2 comments:

the secret knitter said...

I don't know how this works, but wouldn't it be possible to ask the teacher or the school for whatever the next level catalog is and order something for her from that and have it delivered to her classroom?

Sensible Seamstress said...

I came on here to say what "the secret knitter" already did.

Also, some classes/schools have online ordering set up. Could you do your ordering online and choose from the next level(s)? I've never tried that, but it's worth checking.

I also wanted to add: I had the same experience growing up - we didn't have much money, but somehow I always got a huge stack of books from those flyers. I LOVED going through them circling all the books I wanted! It was like Christmas every month. I think I now get more excited than my kids do when I see them come home these days! :)