Think Scholastic Book Orders are Just for Little Kids?

 Remember those great Scholastic book order forms you'd get in elementary school and you couldn't wait to get home and show your mom which books you wanted? Then you waited what seemed like weeks to get those crisp, shiny, brand new books from your teacher. Or remember when your gymnasium or library was transformed into a book store? There would be piles upon piles of books to peruse. I could have spent hours at the book fairs if it weren't for my siblings, who did not seem to share my passion for reading. Those were always my favorite days when I was a kid.

As my son made his way through elementary, I once again got to live vicariously through him, still just as excited when he brought a book order form home. I think his teachers caught on pretty quickly that I was a sucker for them because they began sending them home more and more frequently.

As he got into middle school the fliers became more mature, of course, and I realized that many of my high school students would like some of the books featured. But isn't Scholastic Book Clubs just for kids? I wondered.

Nope! I went online and found out that they have not only the TAB flyers featuring books for grades 7 and up, but TeenRC/BookBeat supplemental flyers with additional book choices just for teens. So I did a little survey of my classes and asked my students if any of them would be interested in ordering books from Scholastic. Most of them were as surprised as I was to find out they had books for teenagers. I signed up as a teacher and they quickly sent me flyers to pass out to my students. My first order had very few students participating. But when those books came in and I passed them out, many students were curious to see which books people ordered. Several asked if I would order more. Of course!

One section of my classroom library.

Build Your Classroom Library on Bonus Points!
I am still addicted to ordering books and have been able to build a pretty good size classroom library from books I either purchased from Amazon.com or Scholastic, and many I earned free from Scholastic's Bonus Points Rewards for teachers. Every time a parent/student orders a book, you earn bonus points which can be used at any time for free books. Some months they will even multiply your bonus points. In my last book order my colleague and I were able to pick out over 30 books on bonus points alone! Now, I must admit that most of the books in my class library are those I ordered from Amazon, or were in my personal collection, or students/staff members donated to my class library. But probably at least 50 were earned on bonus points just in the last two years.

Last year I pre-ordered my classroom sets of Mockingjay ($13 per book, plus a free mockingjay pin) and supplemented my sets of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire with paperbacks for $7 each.

Which books are popular with teens?
Right now I have some students who cannot get enough of the soldier-related stories, pictured below. Other favorites have been the Uglies series, Vladimir Tod series, the Twilight series, the Harry Potter series, the Mortal Instruments series, and any by authors like Rick Riordan, James Patterson, Chris d'Lacey, Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Dessen, Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult, and John Green. Of course, The Hunger Games trilogy has still been the favorites by my students.The nice thing about Scholastic book orders is how affordable they are for students. Most of mine pay for the books themselves, so getting free shipping at the lowest price is a huge deal for them.

Some of my male students cannot read enough war-related books.

This is definitely a favorite for many boys.

Want to sign up for Scholastic Book Club for Teachers?
Sign up here to start offering your students/parents book orders. They can order online (you may have to call them to get a code) or through the traditional fliers. Scholastic Book Club Enrollment for Teachers or Book Club Login Page

I have to give a shout out to Paul at TeachersPayTeachers, as well, for creating a site for teachers to earn extra income. In today's newsletter he mentioned ways in which teachers were spending their earnings from lesson sales. One of them was to buy books and supplies for their classrooms. I spend a large chunk of my earnings on books for my classroom since building a library isn't really part of our department budget. And I am not alone; almost all the sellers I know buy many things for their classes.  So many students around the world benefit directly from both Scholastic Book Clubs and TeachersPayTeachers. It's just another way teachers have found a way to give back to their students and to the community.