Get Ready to Have a Whale of a Time at the Scholastic Book Fair!

As Chairperson of the Scholastic Book Fair, I not only advocate for early childhood literacy; I also strive to unite a community. If parents, teachers, and businesses work together in support of early childhood literacy, everyone wins.

By reading and sharing stories, we can significantly influence a child’s reasoning, language achievement, and problem-solving abilities. These connections build profound relationships with our children and increase their chances of being successful in the future.

When the Scholastic Book Fair comes to Governor Fairfield School, I make it a community-wide event. I let families know how vital the All For Books Program is and how accruing Scholastic Dollars helps us purchase books for our classrooms and Scholastic News Magazine for our students. Regardless of financial status, every child goes home with a book. I help families empower themselves by gifting or selling the books they can read together.

I also volunteer with the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine because I believe their programming is an essential enrichment resource for schools throughout the state. I requested the PTO pay for the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine to come to Fairfield School for Family Night. I knew the Museum had an outreach program that would be a unique tie-in to the Scholastic Book Fair Arctic Adventure theme. As part of their Museum on the Go programming, the Children’s Museum brought Istar, an inflatable 45-foot replica of a real humpback whale that lived in the Atlantic Ocean.

The PTO built the excitement for the Family Night celebration by co-hosting the event with the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine on Facebook. We also linked to the "Get Ready to Have a Whale of a Time” promotional video created by Scholastic and shared it with parent groups in our community. The video brought the magic of the whale to life, and the cross-promotion worked perfectly with Istar, the life-size replica of the whale that came to our Family Night. Since we knew seeing the whale would create memories that would last a lifetime, we made it a FREE event and opened it to the public. The Facebook event page reached 3k people with 264 event page views.

During the Family Night event, children and caregivers were able to shop at the Book Fair together. They listened as Museum educators staffing the event used storytelling and artifacts along with the giant whale model to explore what humpbacks eat, where they swim, and how they thrive in the ocean. Afterward, the children got to explore inside the whale. We even had humpback whale sounds playing in the background to compliment the hands-on learning experience.

In just two hours, we raised $2000.00 to support early childhood literacy. For a small school, it was our most successful fundraiser to date, and everyone went home with a story!