A Letter to the Scholastic Book Fair

Welcome to the weekly series: Love Letters to my Childhood

Dear Scholastic Book Fair,

I love you. I’ll just get that out of the way now. I haven’t talked to you or thought about you in a while, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. Do you know what it was like getting a Scholastic book catalog on my desk after recess? It was awesome. My favorite purchase I ever begged my parents to get was a Scooby-Doo book set that came complete in a cardboard Mystery Machine.

I also bought a lot of cheat code books. And the 2000 Guiness World Record book. It was silver and weird as shit. I guess they were trying to make it look futuristic. I remember they had a picture of the person who had the longest fingernails and they didn’t even look like nails, they looked like long strings of wool. It was really weird.

I always wanted the LeBron James and Kobe Bryant posters, but I don’t think I ever got them. I did get a Freddy Adu poster, I think. They never had Carmelo Anthony and that was my favorite NBA player not named Allen Iverson. You really should’ve had a Carmelo poster.

When I bought stuff from the Scholastic catalog, there was no better feeling than coming back from recess and seeing what I bought sitting right on my desk. The book was always so clean and neat and fun to read. But, I don’t think I ever finished any of the books my parents bought.

Actually, I did. I finish one book: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I don’t know if I got that from the book fair, but that doesn’t matter. I’m not researching anything to confirm whether or not my memory of my childhood was right, that takes the fun out of remembering. What matters is that nothing made me want to read more than the Scholastic Book Fair.

Love,

Hunter