Epic Win: Scholastic Book Orders
Submitted by Rick Z
Scholastic Books was where we got all of our best books! Maniac Magee? Check. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales? Check. Where the Sidewalk Ends? Check. Where the Wild Things Are? Check. Scholastic Books was an epic win because it brought a lot of great books into our lives that we wouldn’t ordinarily have been introduced to by our parents or teachers. For many of us, a book ordered through Scholastic Books was the first book we ever owned.
Unfortunately, Scholastic Books has been warped into an unholy junk peddler that’s allowed into schools under the guise of a “Book Fair” these days. Gone are the classics like Superfudge and The Mouse and the Motorcycle, replaced by fan literature for TV shows like Hannah Montana and Zooey 101.
And Bananas! magazine!
We had “Book Fairs” when I was a kid, but none of the new books, all the classics, well, all the classics and Captain Underpants…
It was the same for me. I loved them. Even if there wasn’t a book fair, we got the order forms occasionally and I’d go home and bug my mom to buy books for me. :]
I always loved it when my school had the Scholastic Book fairs. Then we got a catalogue to order what we wanted. I miss book fairs…
I remember we’d get them once a month, and they’d always ask for a parents signature. Oh imagine how peeved my dad was I copied his info.
I still have my scholastic version of Charlotte’s web.
we still have scholastic book fairs
I always had the biggest stack of books in my class. Those were good times.
Yup. When the books finally came in a cardboard box, it was my favorite school day. My stack, rubber-banded together, was always the largest one.
I remember going through the book orders, circling things I wanted, bearing in mind what looked both fun and valuable – because I knew my parents would never buy something that wasn’t worth the precious money. That’s where many of my most favorite books came from – My Father’s Dragon, Magic School Bus, Unicorns of Balinor, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Animorphs, Ramona Quimby books and sometimes Calvin & Hobbes. Even some old stuff, like Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Frost and Charles Dickens. I loved those books.
It’s a shame the “book fair” is so commercialized now. It was once upon a win.
i would always order at least 10 books per order, and my parents were cool with me getting them. man, i miss those days. i got my first calvin and hobbes from them too. and all the goosebumps books.
man same here. i had all of the goosebumps collection until i went to junior high (they didnt do the magazine in jr high for some reason).
my book collection exists only because my parents allowed me to get these books. i think i dropped $30-$40 in each order into those books. and when they arrived i was like the only person with more than 5 books lol
by the time i got home id read at least two of em. now i cant read a book without falling asleep, wtf happen?
supposedly i was gifted, i think that went away when puberty and hormones kicked in lmao.
i probably order more books out that mag….ya know, for when i get kids *wink wink*
I only ordered two books out of the Scholastic papers, but I’d always sit around wishing I could afford more.
Most recently, I stole my youngest stepsister’s order form and ordered a book on knitting, figuring it’d be simple enough for even a woodenhead like me to learn from. WRONG. D:
I wholeheartedly agree on the Epic Win of Scholastic books, but I disagree with the notion that they are no longer worthy of that status. You can find Calvin and Hobbes, Dary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants in there, you just have to look in the right places. I have a 9 year old son who will argue that this is still an Epic Win, even if he has to hiss at the Hannah Montana stuff in it.
I agree. I’m a teacher and I still use the Scholastic book order. There is an increasing amount of junk but they still have great books for dirt cheap prices and when you order from them you help your child’s teacher get books for the classroom. A win all around!
My mother never EVER ordered any books for me off of these.
It was always a sad day for me when the order sheets came out.
I remember alot of the books from there though… I really miss Captain Underpants and The Stinky Cheese man.
These were awesome back in the day! I remember once I ordered 13 books. My mom was like “$13, not bad.” I was like NO 13 BOOKS! Hehehe.
Also awesome were the free posters with each order. The order sheets also taught me how to add money at such a young age.
BOOK FAIRS!
Where the Wild Things “Roam”? Apparently you guys didn’t actually read the books you ordered…
I’m studying to be a teacher, and you can get scholastic book order forms and order books at my school.
Remember when they didn’t have the book you ordered and they sent you another one with an apology letter? Such a disappointment!
I remember they had some fan books, based off of the Disney movies back in the 90’s, and a few games, but we’re talking Number-Munchers here. Most kids I remember though blew past those and would go straight to the books.
Oh man, I remember getting software, and books from them! Good times. Also the book fairs where alright. Well at least when I went to them back in the 90’s.
Thanks for making a bunch of us feel old. “Software”? My school had top-of-the-line TRS-80 Model III’s back when I was getting these order forms. IF you could buy software, it had to come on a cassette tape. (You do know what those are, right?)
Oh yes, hell I got books of games that you had to program before you could play them.
This reminds me, maybe I should dust off my Commodore, or my TRS-80.
I got The Lord of the Rings through Scholastic. That was a good day.
It used to be Troll book orders who had all the junk in them back in the 90’s. And the Scholastic book fair that the school were my mother teaches had a scholastic book fair and 90% of what they had was children’s books not from TV or movies.
Wow. I remember Scholastic Book Fairs. They were the best thing to ever come to my crappy elementary school. Back then, my parents didn’t have a whole lot of money, so I just stared at all of the books and wished really hard. But sometimes, I got really lucky and they ordered Animorph books for me. Man, I miss those books.
I always had the same issue… money.
Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to color in my own velvet unicorn poster?
I got my first volume of Shakespeare from the Scholastic book order. I also got a ton of other books, but I’ll never forget the Shakespeare. (Or the little monster keychain that had a magic book inside that I donated to a charity yard sale and then bought back because I couldn’t bear to part with him, but he’s just special).
I built my collection of Babysitters Club books through Scholastic. Good times!
this is so weird! i was just thinking about these and book fairs today!
double win: did anyone else get their subscription to zoobooks via these? I remember getting a metric assload of pee-wee scouts through scholastic when I was in 1st grade. good time.
I think that the only reason my parents let me order as many books out of these catalogs as I did was because they would all end up in my moms at-school library. The last time I helped her pack her classroom up for the summer, I discovered that I personally was responisble for more than half of the books she has for the kids to read.
I LOVED these orders. I would pour over them obsessivly to figure out which books a) my parents would let me get (They wern’t really strict, but toys and toys masqurading as books, as well as books based on TV shows were definetly out of the question) and b) which books I really really wanted. I don’t think I spent my allowance on much of anything else.
In fourth grade, I was one of two winners of a contest where my teacher gave us a book from the order form for free. I chose a book called “I Spent My Summer Vaction Kidnapped in Space”.
When I got old enough to help my mom put together the orders, I discovered how big of a pain they actually are. Kudos for all the teachers who carefully seperate each catalouge, collect the money, put together the master order form, ship it off, separate the main order for all the kids, then make sure each kid gets the right order.
Oh! oh! oh! Babysitters club! I was in elementary school during the 90s when BSC was HUGE and you could always get special stuff through the Scholastic book order. They were also get BSC books that were kind of hard to find in stores like the Mysteries or slightly older ones, and the Little Sister books.
Man, I think I’m going to hit the library and read me some BSC!
wow, i miss primary skool..
i only ever go 2 books from this thing :’(
Book orders were so cool. I could always get the “Goosebumps” books that way. I remember bringing it home and BEGGING mom and dad to let me order something. I was looking at one that a friend’s son brought home- TOTALLY NOT THE SAME. Lame.
i loved these so much! there were so many amazing books i got through these. wrinkle in time, the giver, and many of the previously mentioned ones. it was so fun to get your orders in class and everyone could share their books with each other. i know some of us planned with each other which books to get and not get so we could essentially double our order.
I teach second grade and we use Scholastic to this day!! And while it’s true there are Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana crap in there, we also get the Mouse and the Motorcycle and the Narnia series! They still sell the good stuff, too!!
Maybe those book fair and such have sold out a lot more (that’s what that video wants you to believe), but they always had a few video games in there on the back page as well. A book order was where I got my copy of Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Good times.
Same here!
Whenever my son gets these, I always go through them looking to see what they’re offering. I usually find stuff that I read when I was in elementary school. They seems to almost always have something by Beverly Cleary (usually something from the Ramona series). Just a couple of months ago, they even had a three pack of The Mouse On The Motorcycle, Ralph S. Mouse, and Runaway Ralph! Unfortunately, by the time my son showed it to me, it was too late to order, or I would have gladly snatched them up for him!
That same months, the had a boxed set of the Fudge series (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Superfudge, Fudge-a-Mania, Double Fudge). Toa4GN was one of my favourite books as a kid. I remember having to read it in grade 1 (1976-77 for me). By the time the rest of the class had finished, I had read it 3 times! Yeah, I’ve been hooked on reading for ages.
You can orde ronline at scholastic.com ya know? You just ask the teacher for the class code and the teacher still gets credit for the sale.
I remember being so excited about a book i ordered based on the Rugrats movie (lol). But then it was out of stock, so they sent me a biography of Hanson in the mean time, and i didnt even know who they were. Bad times, bad times.
Bunnicula! I found a copy of it at a thrift store a few years back and it’s on my library table along with my adult books.
HELL YES! I loved those!!
There was always a lot of junk in those order forms. That’s not a new thing. As a kid I ordered the novelization of the movie “Spaceballs”!
Maybe I’m just too young of a mother, but I was bringing these home, and now my daughter’s bringing them home, too! it’s funny to see how little has changed.
I DEMAND THE REINSTITUTION OF OREGON TRAIL!!!!!!!!!
AMEN. OT was the savior of my HS computing class.
They have a 25th anneversary edition out now if you look hard enough. Check amazon, they’re good for that kind of stuff!
I loved those books. The colorful pictures were great.
Scholastic was always like that, at least since the late 1970s. Back then, I would find titles like the Gong Show book, complete with stills from the more vulgar acts, and a sort of graphic novel version of The Jerk. Celebrity bios abounded, even back then.
I boycotted Scholastic after the Bristle Bots Fiasco.
WHO’S WITH ME!!!
Scholastic book order day was always a very special day for me in elementary school. My mom would give me a price limit, and I would spend a lot of time trying to work out the combination that would get me the most bang for that price.
Now that I work in a school library, we do the Scholastic book fair, but we don’t put out all the toys and junk. I mean, obviously Scholastic wants you to, but it’s not like they check what you’re doing. Plus, the small items are much easier for kids to steal, and we have unfortunately had some theft at book fairs at our school. It’s hard to watch for that when we’re still doing our regular tasks like helping kids on the computers. So we just put out the books and keep the non-book junk in the back room. I suppose it’s possible that we’re missing out on some possible revenue, but we keep the focus on the books. (Oh, and we do keep the posters available. I loved the posters as a kid!)
Ah what youngsters most of you are. I was in first grade in 72-72 and I LOVED Scholastic book orders. I usually got to order two or three each year. Those books are still on shelves at my mom’s house. My brother is seven years younger than me and he read my books and also got to order some for himself. So great!!
YES!
I once paid for my entire order with a bag full of pennies.
DEAR GOD this is an EPIC EPIC WIN.
Sometimes I’d just buy the little packages with stickers and other neat stuff.
Good times
This is a major epic win. I can remember being so excited getting my magic school bus , goosebumps, and ramona quimby books. Great nostalgic moment.
I always loved the Scholastic Book orders. There were so many things I always wanted to get. But I also loved the Book Fairs, since we could buy both books and cute little eraser tops for our pencils. I hope they’re still around when I have kids!
Back in the dark ages, when I was a kid, Scholastic had nothing but books! And the prices ranged from 50¢ to $2.50 (for a hardcover!). I usually could spend 75¢ to $1.00, my allowance. I volunteer at a library sale and we still see lots of these old, old scholastic books being donated 40 years later!
We have a scholastic books warehouse close to us – a couple of times a year they have a sale and everything is dirt cheap. Usually they only let the local teachers know, so talk your kids teacher up to let you know if one is in your area. My kids are in high school now, so I don’t have much need for them – we usually go to stock up on christmas presents for our friends kids.
I LOVED those! Heh I remember the Reading is Fundamental and Book-It programs (the latter of which was sponsored by Pizza Hut because I remember getting the free personal pizza every so often with vouchers) which always had a ton of Scholastic books. I always being the first one to grab a Babysitters Club book, or a Goosebumps one. Man such good memories of the early 90’s! But I remember they also churned out dumbed-down pop culture books then too, like kids’ novelizations of popular movies at the time (I remember they had ones for Beethoven, The Addams Family Values, and Home Alone) don’t really recall the TV ones.
I wonder if there’s an Epic Win entry for the Babysitters Club. I remember when we all thought that’s we’d do at 13– talk like 80’s businesswomen and hold these organized meetings looking after kids with almost no adult intervention!
Me and my cousins used to pretend babysitter’s club. I was always mallory or mary anne and my other cousin was always kristy or claudia and my younger cousin was always whatever kid we were babysitting. And we’d act out scenes from our favorite books.
Ahh, those were the days…
I hated Maniac Magee. I thought it was going to be a cool book but it was drab and somewhat depressing book on the effects of racism in the 1960s.
When I was in my late 20’s I was dating a guy in his late 30’s. One day we were talking about Scholastic Books and we both remembered a book about a boy who was playing with firecrackers, ended up blind, and went someplace to get a guide dog. We couldn’t remember the title, but we both had read it (10 years apart) and remembered parts of it vividly.
When we got engaged in the late 90’s, I wrote to Scholastic (remember, it was pre-Intarwebz days) and they sent me their complete catalog, some 600 pages of small print. I found the book (“Follow My Leader”) and got it for Hubby for Christmas. And the story was just as good as we remembered it
Hey, I remember it too! Except I never really read all of it.
I have fond memories of the Grab Bags we could get from our catalogs. For a set price one could get a lucky dip bag – there was always something reasonably pants in the bag, but the 4 other books were always worth it.
I got a lot of my Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams books from these orders. I’m embarressed now – I try to teach the Little Biscottis not to be sucked in by these ridiculous romance books, and give them Famous Five instead.
Anyone else order the Microzine game/software packages?
They had a new one every month. Each came with like 4-6 games on it, all at least somewhat educational.
My problem was always that both me and my mom were really forgetful, and I’d never have the order form and check ready to go the day they were due. I remember being so sad the day the stuff came back and everyone else got books but me.
Oh yes! I used to bug the teacher for the latest flyer when it seemed like she wasn’t handing them out on time. How many Hardy Boy books did I get this way–whoa. Dilly McBean! The Boy Who Reversed Himself! Choose Your Own Adventure! Ralph S. Mouse, etc. etc.
anyone else see the effects of teacher brainwashing on these kids in the video?
honestly, if the “colossal amounts of crap” (and seriously what 2nd grade kid knows the word colossal?) bothers you, then don’t order it.
i cannot believe that this teacher made her kids write these letters.
when i was ordering from scholastic, yes, they had videogames in the orders, but i remember them being educational in some way. i distinctly remember seeing Civilization in one order, and wanting it really badly.
and really, who cares what the kids are reading? even if it IS a hannah montana book, the kids are still READING. thats the important thing. its so hard to encourage reading anymore, so anything that motivates kids to read is fantastic in my book.
What the hell is this!? Scholastic book orders were horrid!! They stuck popular names on crap and sent them to kids, nothing in those were worth anything! This is an EPIC FAIL!
I remember getting my books as a child in the 1960s: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Crictor the Boa Constrictor, Amelia Bedelia, and many more. You can still get great books at fantastic prices from Scholastic book orders! We got “The Tale of Desperaux”, “The Thief Lord”, a few of the Harry Potter books, and many more great non-fiction books from Scholastic book orders. Yes, they have a bunch of pop culture junk, but they still have great books.
I really miss book fairs, but they were overpriced and had a bunch of useless junk. I still bought it though… -_-;; i kinda wish i had saved some of that money for GOOD stuff…
I loved book fairs and orders. Would save my allowance and lunch cash so I could buy as many books as possible.
Book order day was my FAVORITE DAY EVER. I’m not sure what I liked better, actually getting the books or reading through the papers to see what was available. I got my first ever Baby Sitters Club book through one of them – which was the beginning of an epic obsession that never really went away. It also started my Far Side addiction.
No video games in my day, but there were stickers and craft kits.
Yeah Scholastic book orders. We got them with the Weekly Reader, once a month or so. I remember getting the Encyclopedia Brown series, several interesting “true” ghost and monster books written by Daniel Cohen, and a couple of Baum’s Oz books. Good times.
I LOVE Scholastic book orders… I work at a school now and they still have them! But there’s like 5-6 different ones now! Even an electronic one w/ like Wii and DS games.
I always loved it when we got the scholastic book orders coming in! I remember ordering my Aladdin soundtrack on cassette tape from them. The version that still had the “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” line in the intro song. I had so many Babysitters Club and Goosebumps books from that. I’d always try to buy the Beverly Clearly books but it was hard to convince my parents of a lot of books, so I usually just got one or two.
The great thing about these orders is that teachers get books out of them too! They accrue so many points when their students order.
~Ash
I made my mom buy sooo many books for me and I read maybe 2% of them ever. I kinda feel bad about it now but they were so cheap that I dont feel THAT bad
I would just like to say that scholastic books used to be filled with that kind of celebrity junk back when we had it too…I definitely ordered a life-sized poster of Jonathan Taylor Thomas AND the official Full House Fan Club Kit from the Scholastic book orders.
MY fifth grade teacher owuld buy the book you wanted for you and then you could “pay down” your book nickel or dime at a time. She always made the student do the math on the front cover of the book. She also kept a basket with 10-15 books in it in case we found one we wanted to own.
As a teacher, I use these with my students. I still love them.
Totally awesome still. Yes there is some junk but that draws the kids that don’t really read. I’ve worked several fairs as a Mom now and every kid seems to finds at least 2 books they want, the tie-ins at least get the kids interested and they still have good books at good prices. I wish they didn’t have video games though my son would rather get video games than books. My favorite memory is getting The Tree Musketeers in 7th or 8th grade. Had it for a couple decades, until hubby found it in our many boxes of books and thought it was a kiddy version since it said Scholastic, still miss it.