Friday is for Kids

I should probably come up with a better title for my Friday dip into kids lit. But I haven't yet. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

One of the most interesting things I read this week was this story in the NYTimes about how a watchdog group has called out Scholastic over their inclusion of electronics, toys, jewelry and other non-book stuff in their catalogs and book fairs at schools.

This is right on the mark. I have one child in elementary school at the moment and have been a volunteer at a school book fair. And seeing all the toys and electronics really has bothered me. The kids can't help but get excited about them, even though they are more expensive than the discount priced books.

It is especially sad to me when I see kids who may not have been sent to school with any money or very little to shop at the book fair and they are picking up toys or electronics that are nearly $20 - when there are $4 books available.

Hopefully they'll pull back on marketing the toys and stick to books, workbooks and activity books. Kids have plenty of ways to see marketing - school is not the place for that.

I'll post some links later today to new books or book lists.