Alternative To Scholastic Book Fair?

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Rolltide said:
Look, it’s a secular book company. They’re going to sell books that appeal to the general public, including people that are not Catholic, or are of no faith whatsoever. It’s not their job to censor themselves. I used to love ordering books from the Scholastic forms. If I remember correctly, the order form is only three or four pages long. Wouldn’t a smarter idea be to simply provide a list of reviews from the Catholic point of view to each parent before the book orders are sent home? That way, each parent can make their own decisions. It would NOT take much effort to do so.
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As the OP explained, they are talking about a book fair and not the order forms that are sent home each month with the students. Scholastic sends the books. The school usually doesn’t get much of a choice on what is being sent, they are at the mercy of what Scholastic would like to push or promote that particular time of the year which is usually tied into a movie coming out. And the OP is talking about a book fair at a Catholic school, why not try and find a supplier that offers more books in line with the Catholic faith? When my daughter was attending the parish school, I know I appreciated those fundraisers that actually involved a Catholic company or a locally owned company. I always was a bit confused about using a company that sent a mixed message to the kids.
 
PatriceA said:
As the OP explained, they are talking about a book fair and not the order forms that are sent home each month with the students. Scholastic sends the books. The school usually doesn’t get much of a choice on what is being sent, they are at the mercy of what Scholastic would like to push or promote that particular time of the year which is usually tied into a movie coming out. And the OP is talking about a book fair at a Catholic school, why not try and find a supplier that offers more books in line with the Catholic faith? When my daughter was attending the parish school, I know I appreciated those fundraisers that actually involved a Catholic company or a locally owned company. I always was a bit confused about using a company that sent a mixed message to the kids.
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That is librarian’s reasoning brilliantly summarized. Thank you.
 
SimJim said:
I can’t say specifically as I’m trying to help out, but I’m not directly involved. I know both the librarian and the principal have issues with Scholastic’s book offerings as it relates to appropriateness in a Catholic school.

There’s a lot of information available on anti-Catholic literature. I recall a book series called Golden Compass which was heavily promoted by Scholastic and had anti-Catholic themes. I had a school aged son when the movie came out. He was in a government school. He actually purchased the book through Scholastic before I became aware. I read the book and the anti-Catholic messaging was so blatant I threw the book away. That incident made me sensitive to the fact that Scholastic has very different values than many Catholic families.

The point of the question is to find a book fair where a Catholic school doesn’t need to dedicate valuable resources to reviewing every book for inappropriate content. Nothing is perfect, but parents spending the money to send their kids to Catholic schools expect to get some measure of protection from the secular and anti-Catholic narratives advanced by many these days. Surely that narrative should not be brought into the schools if there are other options available.
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This is disturbing from wikipedia page on Philip Pullman(author of the Golden Compass) " Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has proposed that His Dark Materials be taught as part of religious education in schools."
😦
 
I have the same problem with the Scholastic Book Fair. They’ll sometimes have a small section of religious books at ours, but otherwise the kids get a day to look at and pick books, then we can either show up and spend the30 minutes or so we have to try to wade through what they’ve picked and determine if the books are appropriate or not, or be the unsupportive, mean, anti-reading parents and not let them get any books. The last three book fairs have featured The Golden Compass books quite prominently, along with lots of books with sexual and/or occult themes, despite complaints from me and other parents. I’ve tried several times to get the school to use the Ignatius Press book club & fair as well (not eliminating Scholastic but as an additional alternative) but have only been told that they’ve received my emails and are looking into it. With Ignatius you don’t get a discount on the books but the school gets up to 35% of the sales for both the monthly flyers and the book fairs.

For the record, before seeing a post on here a few years ago that voiced concerns about Scholastic, we were always the family with the biggest order, often making the difference between whether our daughters’ classes had enough to even place an order, and frequently being the only family to even place an order (which was always enough to guarantee an order being placed). Now we typically only buy a book or two for each of them at the book fair.
 
Gordon_Sims said:
I’ve tried several times to get the school to use the Ignatius Press book club & fair as well (not eliminating Scholastic but as an additional alternative) but have only been told that they’ve received my emails and are looking into it.
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Is this a Catholic school? Hopefully not since one of the main reason a parent chooses a Catholic school is to provide a measure of protection from the unhealthy elements of our culture which infect government schools. If your school is Catholic and doesn’t give a response to your legitimate concerns, you may want to discuss with the parish priest?
 
Gordon_Sims said:
I have the same problem with the Scholastic Book Fair. They’ll sometimes have a small section of religious books at ours, but otherwise the kids get a day to look at and pick books, then we can either show up and spend the30 minutes or so we have to try to wade through what they’ve picked and determine if the books are appropriate or not, or be the unsupportive, mean, anti-reading parents and not let them get any books. The last three book fairs have featured The Golden Compass books quite prominently, along with lots of books with sexual and/or occult themes, despite complaints from me and other parents. I’ve tried several times to get the school to use the Ignatius Press book club & fair as well (not eliminating Scholastic but as an additional alternative) but have only been told that they’ve received my emails and are looking into it. With Ignatius you don’t get a discount on the books but the school gets up to 35% of the sales for both the monthly flyers and the book fairs.

For the record, before seeing a post on here a few years ago that voiced concerns about Scholastic, we were always the family with the biggest order, often making the difference between whether our daughters’ classes had enough to even place an order, and frequently being the only family to even place an order (which was always enough to guarantee an order being placed). Now we typically only buy a book or two for each of them at the book fair.
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Do you have problems with Frozen books for children? They have occult themes.
 
Try contacting this school:

lourdescatholic.org/page/Library.aspx

Unfortunately, Scholastic has objectionable material. One book about a gay teenager provides the gay propaganda in a nutshell: He doesn’t want to be known as the gay guy, he’s just a guy… who later meets another guy and falls in love.

From their site: “A funny, honest novel about being out, being proud…”

Ed
 
Just wanted to let you know that our company does offer an alternative to Scholastic book fairs: we specialize in fun Catholic fiction that evangelizes the imagination of readers by telling a good story. Our books are either published by ourselves or other publishers but what they have in common is
  1. they’re well-written fiction with a fun contemporary vibe that tries to match the best of what’s out there in the secular world
  2. the authors are faithful Catholics and the books usually have strong Catholic elements as well
  3. they are visual and graphic - good illustrations, graphic novels, fun covers.
  4. they are recently published books - not reprints (though we have repackaged classics such as Chestertons The Ball and the Cross) - and feel fresh and contemporary.
We might add lives of the saints, but for now we specialize in fiction since it’s so hard to find good stuff for Catholic children - especially teenagers and young adults - to read. That’s our mission, to try to provide that.

We’re small but we’ve been around over ten years and teens and their families love our books. We just started an outreach to Catholic Schools. So please do check us out and if you like what you see, please recommend us to your local Catholic or private school to get more good fiction into the hands of Catholic students and their parents.

chestertonpress.com/schools/

Thanks!
 
tifischer said:
Christian Book Fair is a ministry

www.christianbookfair.org
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The Christian Book Fair provides a large variety of books that increase and restore the importance of reading books related to moral and religious teachings as an essential tool for inspiring and creating intelligent, faithful, productive, intellectually engaged young and increasing knowledge.

50% of the proceeds from the book fair will be given to the fundraiser’s charitable cause.
 
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