This Year's Scholastic Book Fair

A treasure as always.

Hi friends.

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of popping in at the Scholastic Book Fair we sponsored through the fundraising efforts of #1000wordsofsummer this year.

This year we gave books to all the students attending Esperanza Academy, a K-4 bilingual school, as well as to an aftercare program at ISL St. Roch.

Some students there had never been to a book fair before, and it was fun to watch their surprise and delight. Some made sure to choose one of their books for a younger sibling. Some were excited to get a journal with a lock on it, so they could draw and write down their thoughts just for themselves. One girl told me she liked stories specifically set in the 1800 and 1900s and I thought, “We’ve got a reader for life here.”

Anyway it was great. Life-affirming. Let’s keep giving children books. Real books, that they can hold in their hands.

Thank you to Brooke Paulus (an incredible advocate of reading and literature) who connected me with the supremely competent ToniAnn LaBorde of Community Works, a wonderful organization that works on innovative school programming in New Orleans. Thank you to the staff of Esperanza. And of course thank you to our favorite school librarian Maureen Iverson, who lent her magic touch to all of it one more time.

And again I want to acknowledge those of you who subscribe year-round but who also donated even just a little bit during the summer event. When you paid for a monthly subscription at the time (or directly venmo’d me), you absolutely bought a kid a book. Thanks for your faith and for putting a little positive energy into the world.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.