I Miss My Button
Flash back 20 some odd years to my favorite part of elementary school. No, it wasn't recess...it was participating in the Book It plan. I had always read like crazy so when one of my teachers told us about the plan...I was so excited that I nearly fell out of my chair. We were all given a big button and told that whenever we read a book, we had to write a book report and give it to the teacher. In exchange we would receive a gold star that fit on our button. Once we had stars all around the button...we got a free pizza!!! What was better than that? Not only did I get to read...but I got a pizza just for doing it! Let me tell you...I read so many books and wrote so many reports that I started stock piling them. Too bad I didn't think about selling the reports to the kids who didn't like to read.
My other favorite memory of elementary school was the book fair. I would look forward to these for weeks and weeks once the teachers handed out the little catalogs. I would pour over my little catalog and carefully pick which books I wanted, then I'd bargain with my mother over how many chores I'd have to do in exchange for the money.On the day of the fair I would wear my favorite clothes and wait with almost unbearable anticipation until our teacher finally announced that it was our turn. Money and catalog clutched to my chest, I took my place in the alphabetical, single file line and silently cursed my parents for having a last name that was so far down the alphabet. I can still remember the feeling of awe that I experienced when I walked into the library and saw the open book cases literally overflowing with books. I don't remember ever being happier in school. Ever.
posted by Lindsey @ 12/05/2005 06:59:00 PM
27 Comments:
You bring back fund memories. My mom is a librarian and I can't even count how many times she would drag me to the library and read for the whole day. I thank her now, b/c i enjoy it, especially Victorian English Lit.
One time, when I was in the 5th grade, I came to ask my teacher for help on my math project and she was gone, however she had a whole stack of Pizza Hut booket slips on her desk. I took about 10 of them and enjoyed many personal pan pizzas because of her!
Sweet :-) Strange to even begin to imagine how many books we have read in our lifetime!
(not only that, if I like a book, I can read it many times).
As and avid reader as well I wish I got free pizza for doing it. I would never be hungry...I miss booksales but that is what Borders is for I guess. To bad the books got more expensive.
What a great memory, Linny. Book fairs were the best! I haven't thought of those in years.
“I was so excited that I nearly fell out of my chair.” That is so sweet and so funny.
I remember the first book I had. I think it was my first book, anyway. I was two or three and the book was cut in the shape of a crouching rabbit. The pages were a thick cardboard so my chubby baby fingers could turn them.
I have been an avid reader ever since. In high school, I’d read the assigned books as soon as I got my hands on it. John Wyndham, George Orwell, Shakespeare, it mattered not. When we had to write an essay on a certain chapter I had to go back a re-read it refresh my memory of what exactly happened in Chapter 5. Usually I’d already read it at least twice, but had also read three more books afterwards. When we had reading in class time, to ensure the students read the book, I was usually making my third pass of the entire book.
I just never understood why so many of the other kids thought reading, and learning in general, was such a chore.
ok...as sad as all that sounds (and no i don't mean unhappy)...i scarily understand exactly what you mean and i was the same, in primary school i had a reading age 5 years above me...which scared the teachers a little. but we had a project called BERT (both enjoy reading together) where i was supposed to take a book from the school library and read it with my mum...instead i read it in like a day, then had to wait until my mum had read it before i could get a new one. i even reember sending her into school once to get me another couple of books when i was off sick
This is so strange...Just a few days ago, I asked a friend of mine if he remembered the whole Pizza hut, book program! He didn't, but girl, my sister and I do!!
(Along with every other single obscure thing from back in the day)
But yes, Tuesday nights, my mom would take us to Pizza Hut, and we'd all eat those little pizzas. Much like you, I couldn't believe that the other kids didn't read more. It was fun anyways, but free pizza too??
Good Lord, what a deal.
And the book fair. I LOVED the book fair!!
Just the smell of all those new books was enough to make me happy, I swear!
I'm still such a book girl, even though I write more than read. I could spend hours in a book store, just pouring over the glossy covers and the unbroken bindings.
(Sigh)
Good times. :)
~ Ash
Have you got the tickets to Narnia?
Can't wait for it!!!
I'm so glad I"m not the only one who has loved books so much my whole life. For awhile I thought I was a bit of a weirdo. :0)
Saffron...no tickets yet, but have made plans with a friend to see it Sunday afternoon. Can't wait. Am rereading the book now.
Linny, I love your stories. Remember the smell of new books and libraries? I still get that when I go to Half Price Books. It puts me in a trance.
You can't get that smell at Barnes & Nobel because of the Starbucks in each store. However, Starbucks smells pretty good too.
I was in our book club too. I always read more books than I needed too and I was in advanced classes as early as first grade.
I read Stephen King's Carrie when it first came out. I think I was 7 or 8. My mom worried. ;)
That was a far cry from Judy Blume books.
Cool story! I must be retarted because I hate to read, I must have ADD. I will read when I have to for work purposes and to my kids but that's it. I am surely missing out.
Book fairs were the best! EVER! IN LIFE!
I'd always go home with a new Babysitters Club book. Good stuff.
Come to think of it, that's what the real world's missing, right? Work would be so much better with annual book fairs.
I miss the book fairs.
For the first few years I remember them they sucked because my mom was single and poor and it was like, buy Kimberly a book, or feed the family tonight.
But once she remarried the book fair was awesome.
Oh man, the book fair was by far my favorite event from school too! I just heard the oddest thing from my mother-in-law, who's a teacher. She said they've ended all Scholastic & Troll book fairs because they are not allowed to "sell" on school grounds anymore! How awful is that??? It's such a great thing for kids to do. I don't know if it's just my state that does it, but all of the school districts around here are starting to adapt the policy. Awful.
We never had the Book It Pizza program!!!!! I'm so jealous! I was a bookworm too- I could have gotten quite a few pizzas.
Thanks for bringing back such great memories. :)
Book geek here too. Many fond memories of book fairs and weekly readers.
I loved the book fairs too! It was so exciting. I didn't have the same contest, but I was a leader in the reading contests too because I loved reading soooo much. Good memories. Thanks!
You bring back such good memories. Although my school didn't participate in food in exchange for reading (we were very academic--you learn because it's what people do--they achieve to achieve), we did have book fairs. I remember my first one (at a different school) the smell of the new books, the untouched shiny and colorful covers. This may have prompted my getting a first degree in journalism.
I still love bookstores. There is something about them that eases and comforts me at the same time.
We had a caterpillar in 5th grade. For every 200 pages of book that you read and wrote a report on, you added one section to the caterpillar. I was reading about average with the class until the end of the semester when I wrote reports for 2 or 3 books that were more than four hundred pages long. One was on the Battle of Midway. I ended up equaling the amount of sections added the entire class. I was just a little ahead of them. Just a little.
Courtney reminded me of the Babysitters Club...my neighbour and i had all of them and even had our own "club" LOL.
Wow. The book fair. We would take those little paper catalogs and circle all the books we wanted and I would WAIT until it was time for my class to go.
I don't know if it's an age thing... but I have been thinking about the past a lot. Sometimes it's a bit nostalgic and sometimes it's just understanding things in a different way. I wish I could write all my memories down so I never ever forget them.
-N
LOL...awww...you're such a geek! That's okay....I recall the same memories. Not to the same extent, but the memories were vaugely similar. We're both geeks.
AWWW.. u were a cute lil nurd like me... did u have glasses too?
i was very excited for my Scholastic Book Orders.
We had something similar to this in 5th Grade. There was a sun in one corner and the nine planets heading out across the class to Pluto in the opposite corner. Each planet was a certain number of pages from the sun. Each kid in the class had his own space ship that travelled out from the sun to show everyone where you were in your reading. If you made it Pluto, then you got a free pizza.
I remember reading books well out of my understanding for the pages alone (Shogun and Centennial were among these). I made the trip to Pluto five times. More pizza for me!
gosh girl, you took me way back...I remember them gold stars too. sweet memories, how I wish I was in elementary again.
Do you think I could get in on that book plan now? :)
Looking for information and found it at this great site... Purchase ultram online casino side effects of using fish oil supplements the mystery of allegra
Post a Comment
<< Home