Book Fair Ideas

We just wrapped up our Fall Scholastic Book Fair last week.  The Fall theme was "All Star Book Fair."  I have to say, after completing two Book Fairs last year, I felt like I had the set up, run, and take down under control.

And I suppose that was a good thing, because the Book Fair was not delivered until the Friday morning the week before the Book Fair.  I didn't really want to spend the night at school getting things set up, so I closed the Media Center except for book returns and with the help of a parent volunteer, got to work setting things up.  By 3:30, everything seemed ready to go for the following week.

I tried to make decorating simply, quick and easy by simply carefully taping over the door decor I already had up so that I wouldn't have to take down and redecorate after the Book Fair.  It worked pretty well.

I used sports items to go with the All Star theme and traced "foam fingers" and megaphones onto bulletin board paper.

 Then I simply added some small cut outs of basketballs, footballs and baseballs because they were the easiest to draw and cut out.

Unfortunately, Preview Day had to be moved to Monday since the Book Fair was not ready on Friday.  I think this might have hurt sales a bit.  We made only about 66% of the sales that we made around the same time last year.  It was the end of the month, too, so that might have had something to do with it.

I was glad to see that less of the doodaddy stuff was bought this go round. I followed the advice of  Jenn Underhill of the Three Ring Library blog and made this board to display the junky stuff. 

Customers simply had to tell the cashier the number of the item they wished to purchase rather than digging through everything on the table.  Nothing mysteriously disappeared from that section either.  It did take me a couple of hours to put the board together, and I am not sure that it didn't negatively affect sales, but I realize the Book Fair is about getting books in kids' hands, not selling junky stuff, so I guess it was worth the effort.

If you're looking for some more Book Fair ideas, I've started a Pinterest board that you might like to check out.  There aren't a whole lot of pins on it, yet, but I do add a pin to it from time to time.  Check it out here if you are interested.

Do you have any great Book Fair ideas to share?