Book Shopping With Friends: Junior Library Guild Warehouse Sale!!

What could be better than book shopping with friends? We are lucky to live in the city where Junior Library Guild is located.  I love the services that Junior Library Guild provides.  I feel pretty good about the ways I keep up with books but there are always categories that I am not so good at keeping up with and analyzing.  I usually subscribe to a few categories a year as a way to build up the collection in a certain area. I can count on JLG to provide great new books on a regular basis.

Once or twice a year, JLG has a warehouse sale and sells its overstock books for $5 each. These are all great books--you can't go wrong on any titles that JLG reviews. And they are all hardback. I usually spend about $200 on books for the library and a few dollars on myself at this sale.

This year, I shopped with friends and colleagues, Kami and Katie. You can see by the photo above that we all found great books and we were VERY happy with our purchases. I am happy to let you know that I did not spend the most (although I spent plenty!). It was fun to shop together, talk titles, and leave with great boxes of new books for our students.

Some highlights from my purchases this year:

I bought 2 books for my personal reading that I am extra excited about:

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE BARBIE: A DOLL'S HISTORY AND HER IMPACT ON US by Tanya Lee Stone is a book I've had my eye on for a while.  I am anxious to read this book and to learn more about the history of Barbie. From the review, it looks like a great balanced piece.  I'm not sure when I'll get to it, but I do like reading lots about history of toys, pop culture, etc. so I am sure I will enjoy it.

The other I picked up for my own personal reading is THE ASK AND THE ANSWER. I have been hearing about how amazing this Chaos Walking series is and I figure I will get to it sometime.  I think I own 2 of the 3 books now!

I picked up lots of books for the library--about 35. Many are extra copies of favorites such as SIDEKICKS, SQUISH, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID and WINTER'S TAIL. It is hard on a small budget to have too many copies of any one title, but at this bargain rate, it will allow more students to read books they love.   Others will be new to the library. Some books that I'll be adding to the library because of this great warehouse sale are:

ALPHAOOPS: H IS FOR HALLOWEEN by Alethea Kontis.  This is a fun sequel to the first ALPHAOOPS in which the letters are all dressed up for Halloween. A fun way to play with words and letters.  We don't have a huge collection of books about Halloween so this will be a fun add. And, since it is an ABC book, I think kids will read it all year round.

There were so many great graphic novels at the sale. Recently JLG has added several levels of graphic novels to the kinds of books they review. I had several from their list and added a few more this week.  I was excited to see ATHENA: GREY-EYED GODDESS by George O'Connor.  So many kids are interested in Greek mythology since reading the Percy Jackson series and I love this graphic novel series. This is categorized as YA and seems appropriate for some of the older elementary readers (targeted audience grades 5-9)

I wasn't aware of THE CARTOON CHRONICLES OF AMERICA so was thrilled to see ROAD TO REVOLUTION. I have a handful of students interested in American History and this looks like a good intro to this time period.

I was able to add a few titles to great series we have in the library.  I added NIKKI AND DEJA: THE NEWSY NEWS NEWSLETTER by Karen English. I love this series for transitional readers and was glad to see another to add to our collection. I also discovered KEENA FORD AND THE SECRET JOURNAL MIX-UP by Melissa Thomson.  From the cover, this looks like a book filled with a bit of preteen drama!

I LOVE the Scientist in the Field series--I think it is some of the best nonfiction available for 4-8th graders. I have a few students who are just starting to look at the series so I added two that we don't own.  EXTREME SCIENTISTS. This one is  a bit different from the others in the series. It is a series of short pieces about various scientists. This would make a great read aloud as each scientist has a fascinating story. The other one that I picked up is SAVING THE GHOST OF THE MOUNTAIN that explores the issues around studying and protecting the snow leopard.

Finally, I've been trying to add to our biography collection since I began in the library 4 years ago. There are so many great picture book biographies and kids have the stamina to read these and learn about the people in history. I picked up NO EASY WAY: THE STORY OF TED WILLIAMS AND THE LAST .400 SEASON by Fred Bowen. I imagine this one will be checked out the minute it hits the shelves.