Book fairs

From World Book Day I have ben presiding over our second book fair since joining my school. I got to tell you - its no picnic.

First day we did it (6 March) was a preview day so we just had to worry about setting up but even that day had its problems. As you know from reading this blog, the daily baby-sitting session known as prep is in the library. So try to imagine keeping 45 kids quiet with all those shiny new books just begging to be picked up and oohed and aahed over. Needless to say I failed.

Day two, we decided to make break for reservatios only as it is only for fifteen minutes. We're librarians not mathematicians - you try working out the cost of several books, with a voucher nad answering questions while making sure they don't destroy any more books than you can prevent! If you are wondering we got that down to one. They took out toy bits from one book and put the on a different shelf. Aargh.

Lunchtime arrives, hordes of kids descend on us, all asking for their reservaions, to buy other books. oh and "Miss, I don't want that book now, can I have this one." Yeah if you can do the maths for me, Of course I don't say that, I just smile sweetly and say "yes", getting out the calculator.

So there we were, about ten kids in my queue and ten kids in my assistant's. ...and the book fair people call. I mean they were calling a library in a school. Is calling at lunchtime a really sensible thing to do to get on the librarian's good side? hmm. Finally get her off the line with non-committal answers and get back to to the hordes. Ten minutes later, 2 o'clcck and bliss. We've stil got two more days of this...