“Which books are good?” asked second grader Jaya Garib. Chrisley Alexis UDII was standing behind the cashier’s table helping young Jaya find what she needed. National Honor Society members like Chrisley and Prep Division teachers were volunteering at the Scholastic Book Fair in the boardroom. They were helping students K-6, and even some Prep Division students, find books that could interest them, as well as running the cashier register and cleaning up.

This event is monumental for everyone at St. Benedict’s. This book fair took place in the main boardroom today and will until 8 p.m and open from 8:45 a.m to 5 p.m tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 30. It is the first one that has taken place in nearly 10 years at SBP.

“The elementary school always bought books from Scholastic, online,” explained Sister Ann Marie Gass S.S.J, who is in charge of St. Benedict’s Elementary Division. The book fair was organized by the Reading Skills Committee, which is composed of several Prep Division teachers; the person on the committee who spearheaded the effort was Mr. Jon Marlow, who is also head of the Reading Skills Committee.

“The goal of this committee is to increase vocabulary and reading skills,” said Mrs. Grace Lenehan, another member of the committee.

“I wanted to do the scholastic book fair for a few years as head of the Reading Skills Committee, but I just couldn’t get enough momentum to get it going. So I just simply contacted Scholastic to get a book fair going,” said Mr. Marlow. “One of the goals of the Reading Skills Committee is to promote reading around the school.”

The Reading Skills Committee also hopes to have another book fair in the spring. The success of the current book fair will help determine whether or not SBP will have more fairs in the near future. There are only a miniscule selection of books geared toward Prep Division students, but this book fair will help Scholastic determine if SBP can sell enough books for any future book fairs.

As Mr. Marlow explained, if the book fair is successful,  “…we can always schedule another one in the spring and have more titles. This can show us if students are interested to buy books.”

“Scholastic is in the business to make money. I didn’t want (Scholastic) to send us boxes and boxes of stuff, expecting us to sell $5,000 worth of books and we only sold $1,000. They’d lose money, and it’d be hard for us to get in business with them again,” explained Mr. Marlow.