(no subject)

[the_rck]

I spent nearly five hours yesterday link finding for metanews. Some of that was that I wasn't able to fully focus on what I was doing for the full time, and some of that is that there were some items that weren't clearly either meta or not meta. I had to read those closely and make a call one way or the other.

I spent two hours, from 12-2, at the school, helping with the Scholastic book fair. It was a preview day with kids coming in, a class at a time, to make wishlists that they could take home to their parents. There was kindergarten class, a first grade, and a second grade. We had about seven sixth graders to help with each class, but the last class, the kindergarten, was so large that all of the adults present had to take a couple of kids each.

One of my kindergartners didn't speak much English. The teacher shuffled the assignments around to give me another little girl who spoke both English and whatever language the other girl spoke. (I'm guessing Japanese, based on knowing that her name is one found in Japan, but I don't know that that name isn't also found in Korea or China or somewhere else.) I thought, for a little while, that we wouldn't find any books that either girl wanted, but they both decided they really wanted some of the Christmas books. That surprised me because I wouldn't expect either of them necessarily to be Christian. Then again, they're kindergartners, and the Christmas books are pretty. I doubt they could read most of the titles.

The way the book fair is being run this year, the only good time for parents to come in to shop is the hour and a half the fair will be open tonight. The librarian seems to be assuming that the daytime hours are for the kids to shop and buy. Nobody's said parents can't come in and shop then, but there's nothing going on to encourage it, and this evening is the only time not during school hours. Usually, there are after school and before school times for parents to come in, too.

Past experience says that very, very few parents will want to send money or checks with their kids. They'd rather shop themselves. Part of that is wanting to see the books. Part of that is that they may want to buy the books as holiday gifts. Part of that is knowing that there are lots of other books, some of which the parents might prefer over what the kids selected. I also can't imagine giving a five or six year old money to shop and sending them off to school with it.

Cordelia selected three books she's interested in buying. She hasn't given me the list, so I don't know what they are or how much they cost. She wants me to give her money to buy them herself (I think she's afraid that, if I do the shopping, she won't see the books until Christmas. She might be right). I would like to take the list and shop myself. There may be books I want (I read a fair amount of middle grade fiction, and there's a slow cooker recipe book that I'm eying), and most of the teachers have wishlists. I would be happy to buy something off a wishlist for one or both of Cordelia's teachers, but I need to actually go to the sale in order to do that.

Cordelia has decided that she doesn't want to go to the event tonight. She has said that she might be willing to go to the book sale part of it, but she's not interested in the other activities (some sort of dancing and some reading books aloud). I would rather stay far away from the school tonight as I expect it to be packed. If I'm going to go, I will have to take an Ativan and hope that it helps.

Comments

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

I really detest the wish-list feature of the Scholastic Book Fair. It forces parents to either buy what their child listed or disappoint your child. There are a few fundraisers that work like that (eg. Artwear), and I usually boycott all of them. Grumble.

[the_rck]

For our family, the wishlist has been a good thing. I wouldn't know what Cordelia wanted otherwise, and I do like to give her some books from the book fair for Christmas. But we're a family that buys a lot of books and can afford to buy a lot of books. Cordelia also doesn't tend to ask for the $25 Lego books that some kids adore. Some kids ask for nothing but the really expensive stuff and then are vastly disappointed not to get any of them. It's not fair to ask a kindergartner to make a wishlist with an eye toward what their family can actually afford, but it's also not fair to families to raise a kid's expectations with a wishlist like that.

We did emphasize to the kids yesterday that putting something on their wishlist didn't mean they'd get it.