By Tyler Wright
The Cockatoo Primary School community has given big at this year’s Book Fair, spending around $4,500 and in turn providing the school with about $1,300 for literacy resources to share amongst classes.
“Because the last few years we haven’t really been able to do [the fair] because of Covid, it was nice to have parents back on site, and being able to embrace reading literature with their kids,” Book Fair coordinator and middle school classroom teacher Janelle Dale said.
“I think it’s really important because it gives the students a little bit more purpose and a little bit of excitement coming back to school, especially off the back of Covid,” Janelle said.
“It creates inclusiveness and connectedness because the kids see each other in similar dress ups, or they’ve come in the same character.
It’s really cute to see them outside in the yard, and they run up to one another – it might be a prep and a grade six – and they’re both dressed up as Hermione from Harry Potter.
it creates that whole school approach to celebration together. It’s something that we can do all together. And it also connects us to the community, like having the books out open in the mornings, the parents could come up, and really celebrate that love of reading and literature with the kids.
Janelle said it is refreshing to see comics like Dog Man and Diary of a Wimpy Kid encapsulating what children are interested in, rather than assuming what children are interested in.
“I think authors are looking at it from an inclusive lens, because you’ve got dragon girls and previously, it would always be ‘dragons are targeted at boys,’ Janelle said.
“It’s really refreshing to see these novels and series coming out, and the kids are really loving that.”
This year, Cockatoo Primary School was able to raise more money by offering more buying sessions for children and families.
“We rang Scholastic… we were a little bit more choosy with what we asked for them to send; we knew what our what our kids were wanting, and then they sent us more products than they did last year,” Janelle said.
“The prices ranged in the books from $8 up to $25, but we also had posters and pencils and rubbers so the kids who only had $1 or $2 could still come along to the fair and purchase something and feel like that they were celebrating literature in some way.
From that $4,500 that the school community spent, we then get about 30 per cent of that to then buy resources to use at school,” she said.
