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Is your kid like mine? When it’s Scholastic books time, she wants all the books! She comes home from school with the Scholastic book order forms, grabs a pen, and starts circling. The next thing I know, I am being handed order forms that look like poorly written papers graded by a strict teacher – covered in markings with upwards of 30 books that my kid wants me to buy.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I absolutely love how much she loves books! But that many books is not in our budget.
And then my mommy guilt kicks in because I think about how my kid wants to read books, and books are good for her – one of the best things she can do with her free time, and how can I complain that she wants to read? And I’m going to deny her the joy in reading the books that interest her? Ugh, what to do?
What if I told you that you could get most of the Scholastic books that your kid wants without spending a dime?
I used to work with her on narrowing it down to two or three, or if time was short, I’d pick a couple for her and buy them.
Well, this month, I discovered the best possible way to get her the books she wants without spending a dime, and I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.
And the key is: the public library, my friends. I logged into the library’s website with my daughter’s marked up order forms and started searching for each book one by one. I found nearly all of them!!!
Some were ebooks that I checked out right away (and then downloaded to my phone with the Overdrive App). Most were hardback. If they weren’t already at the library we normally use, I requested them for pick up – 20 books in all.
I was so excited!
I told my daughter the great news – that she was going to get to read a lot of the books she circled from scholastic because I found them at the library! Inevitably, when she sadly asked why we couldn’t buy them so she could keep them, I told her that if she loved any of the books that much after she read them once, we would add it to her wish list. I think she realized the wisdom in this. ?(That’s another thing we do in our family to prevent impulse buys. We keep wish lists on amazon for each family member, and when we see something we want, we can save it there.)
So, I started getting emails from the library all through the week about which books were now ready for pick up, and today, I stopped by, and checked out a bundle of 13 books! I didn’t even have to find them on the shelves. They were waiting for me on the special “holds” shelf.
Here’s our stash that fit nicely into one of our reusable bags. It was much easier to carry them all that way:
Breakdown on how much money our family saved by using the library:
- Gaston – $4
- I want my hat back – $5
- Miss Fox’s class goes green – $4
- Sink or swim – $7
- Click, clack, peep!- $4
- Upside-down magic – $4
- The giving tree – $12
- The legend of rock paper scissors- $4
- Antoinette – $4
- Not quite narwhal – $4
- Good morning, Grizzle Grump! – $3
- Jack and the beanstalk and the french fries – $16
- Junie B. Jones. Dumb bunny – $1
- Geronimo Stilton Cyber-thief Showdown – $5
Total Saved: $77
So, the next time your kid circles a crazy number of books from Scholastic, there’s no need to stifle that excitement. Go look for them at your nearest public library and read for free!
If you give it a try, please share your success with us in the comments. How much did you save???
3 comments
Great idea! I’m pretty sure the online library saved me thousands of dollars. Josh was such a voracious reader. He’d have a book completely read before we got home. We coukd have never finacially supported his reading habit.lol.
Oh my goodness, right? That is awesome!
E is the same way. She read all of the books that I mentioned in this post in one day, and we’re going back for more tomorrow. A reading habit is the best habit. 😉 We also check out a lot of ebooks from the library using the Overdrive App. Priceless.