How to Find the Good Books in Scholastic Fliers

It's that time of year again. Scholastic book club fliers will be coming home in backpacks, tucked in to parent mailboxes, and displayed suggestively in classrooms and front offices.

These fliers are full of tantalizing "discounts" on books, shiny toys and novelties, and lots and lots of fluff. If you take the time to dig a little, you can find the gems. After spending many years ordering as a parent and administering book club orders for two entire schools, I developed a 3-step process for putting together an order.

• Free choice: Your child is allowed any single book in the flier. No questions asked.
• Remove the junk: Physically cross out the undesirable books
• Evaluate the rest: Consider value and content quality

1. Free choice

Hand the flier to your child and ask him/her to select any book and give the flier back to you. Circle it. Order it. Impose a maximum cost if you must, but don't object or roll your eyes.

Why? Children deserve the opportunity to select a book to own that they want. Reading should be a pleasurable activity, and all books "count," especially for reluctant readers.

2. Remove the junk.

Using a crayon or ball point pen (not felt tip or Sharpie), cross out the following:




Licensed characters, celebrities, movie novelizations






Books that come with toys, novelties, jewelry, etc.






Spin-off titles based on popular book characters






DVDs, software, and video games





Anything you personally dislike

3. Evaluate the rest.

Consider value for price (and keep crossing things out!)

All books are paperback unless otherwise specified. To keep prices low, Scholastic reprints books from other publishers using low grade paper and lower resolution images. These books are essentially disposable.

All books priced $4 and under are the same physical quality. This means that if you are paying more than $1, you are probably paying a huge markup (100-400%). Bear in mind that Scholastic is a for-profit company. They took in millions and millions and millions of dollars in revenue last year.

Paperback books 24 pages or shorter are usually bound with staples. There will be no words on the spine. This practice keeps prices low, but insures that the books won't last long. The industry word for this is "saddle stitched" which sounds better than "staple-bound."

Hardcover books and board books sold on Scholastic are often cheaper on Amazon. Buy them there and donate the difference in cash to your school.

Do the math with book sets to determine the price per book. Ignore the comparison "retail" cost.

CDs that come with books will be loose in paper sleeves.

Consider book dimensions. "Mini" and "pocket" books may be much smaller than you expect, and Scholastic no longer reveals the sizes of books in their descriptions. Most Scholastic imprints are smaller than the original publishers' editions.

Read reviews on Amazon



"Disappointment" "So boring"





"Hysterical!" "This is a winner!"


Once you've narrowed things down, consider your budget and finalize your order. Make your teacher really happy by ordering online. That means less work for him/her and an extra $3 in book credit for the class. Just be sure that if you start shopping online (which is EXACTLY what Scholastic wants because online shoppers tend to spend more when they have their credit cards out), you use the same level of caution and selectivity.

Happy shopping and happy reading!