A trip back to Maddie's

On March 31, I was back in Maddie's realm to assist her with her book fair. It was an evening event. The original plan was to serve a dinner in the cafeteria and there was a sporting event that evening. Folks had ordered food from a local (excellent) restaurant as a fund raiser for the school. Maddie's library has an outside entrance. Parents coming for supper were to be directed through the library, past the book fair, and to the cafeteria for the plates they had ordered.

In my grade school in Indianapolis, the book fair was always accompanied by a pancake supper. Both events were held together in the gym. Tired mothers loved it. It was an excuse not to cook, a great way to support the school, and we were each allowed to pick out a book we'd like to receive for Christmas. Dare I reveal my age and say they also sold records, too? I was never able to convince my children's school to do this kind of combination event so I was delighted to see that Maddie's school was using this strategy to draw a bigger crowd for their book sale and sporting event.

Typically Maddie does two book fairs a year as a fundraiser for the library. She does a large one in the fall and a small one in the spring. For most of her families, money is a little tighter in the spring as they plan for camps, summer childcare, and vacations, which is why the spring fair is a smaller event. But she still had a great display. She works with Scholastic (my children's grade and middle school regularly had Scholastic fairs so it was all really familiar). She is clearly in touch with the students' reading interests. She also carefully avoids having lots of the little plastic chachkas that generally permeate the book fairs and take attention away from the reading materials.

Unfortunately, the evening plans had changed. Instead of bringing parents through the building to the cafeteria, the food was set up outside so folks just picked up their plates and went home or to the sporting event. Few even got out of their cars. Some interested parents did come in. Those that did were warm and enthusiastic. The kids, of course, loved the set up, knew which books they wanted, and dragged parents over to see. Having done this routine with my kids for years, it was fun to relive. I found myself parousing the shelves in hopes of finding something my (much older) kids hadn't already read.

But I didn't and interested parents were few and far between. So Maddie and I talked about the perils of moving her inventory to a 14 digit barcode and how much she liked the Follette Destiny system. She even had a moment to demonstrate it for me.

I'm sorry the book fair that evening was not a big financial success, though hopefully the other days were better. She obviously had put a tremendous amount of work into the selection, set up and sales effort. I don't know who changed the evening's plans, but they really messed up a great marketing opportunity.