Arel Felton
Staff Writer
arfelton@valdosta.edu

VSU will be hosting its 10th anniversary Scholastic Book Fair at the Dewar College of Education Sept. 8 through Sept. 14 with the hopes of instilling a love for reading in children..
The fair will be open on the first floor of the Education building from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and will close on Friday the 11 at 1 p.m.
Sponsored by the Dewar College of Education, the fair has a wide variety of items to choose from, not just books. Everything from Hannah Montana cookbooks, pencils, erasers and books geared towards teaching pre-school children to read can be found.
The book fair has reading levels ranging from early childhood to adolescence and reference books for current and future teachers. Some featured books for this year’s book fair include “Tentacles” by Roland Smith, “First Dog” by J. Patrick Lewis and Beth Zappitello, “Zoobreak” by Gordon Korman, and “The Battle of the Labyrinth” by Rick Riordan.
The books are all color-coded and set up by age groups.
Before shopping, customers can pick up a paper outlining what is best to buy for eack age group.
Students in VSU’s Valdosta Early College Academy program had the opportunity to get the first look at the book fair Tuesday morning.
VECA is composed of sixth and seventh graders and has about sixty children in all. The children in the program were allowed to choose one book, put it on their “Classroom Wish List”, and place a slip of paper with their names inside a copy of that book. Shoppers can later come by, look at the wish list and choose to purchase a book for a student.
“Last year, everyone got a book,” Julie Reffel, co-chairperson, said.
This year, the book fair has a goal of $3,000. What isn’t sent back to Scholastic will be used towards services for students in the VECA program, such as ‘Reading The Program’ held Monday and Wednesday’s from 4 to 4:50 p.m.
The book fair will be run by Julie Reffel and Sheryl Dasinger and anyone else who wishes to volunteer. Volunteers will set up the books and handle money.
For more information about the book fair or to sign up to volunteer access the book fair’s Web site at http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/bookfairs/cptoolkit/publish/vsu