I loved when we got things from Scholastic or when the Book Mobile showed up at the school. I very rarely could afford to get anything beyond a 99 cent book on occasion, but I found their novelty a welcome change of pace in my school week. It is good to see that they are still sending these out and kids are still enjoying something that I enjoyed.
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The Retroist
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I loved those order forms like no other. I always put aside part of my allowance so that I could go crazy when these arrived. Then you earned points and I could get more silly books about Cryptids and Two Minute Mysteries and Spy Equiptment and a huge picture book on Ancient Egypt ect…I liked the kits. I liked the way my locker and desk were like a mini library which I shared with all who asked so they could read my pop up dinosaur book during free reading time. I should have had my own rack in the room.
I definitely look back fondly at these forms. Thanks for the memories.
I almost always got 3 books, because that’s what was required for the free prize (usually either a poster or a set of stickers). These usually wound up being mostly comic books (newspaper reprints like garfield, heathcliff, and beetle bailey), along with mad libs, and occaisionally an oddball book like a jokebook (I had a cats/dogs one where you flipped it over & read “backwards” to get the other set of jokes). Sometimes either the prize would be lame or I just couldn’t find 3 books that I would ever bother reading.
I remember when they first started including software in the catalogs. Apparently now they also include videos & even toys, there’s a big controversy about it.
I was digging through an old box of school papers a while back & found that I still had some of the catalogs from when I was a kid.
I loved these and now enjoy perusing them with my son. As stated above, it’s been expanded a little. However, they do have some with toys – but they are building toys and they are pretty cool.
it was a rare (1 or 2 times) event when I would be able to order from them. So when my son got the form in school we always let him order some books. Still fun to see the forms even now as an adult.
I always ordered any books i could find about Bigfoot, Loch Ness, ghosts, UFOs, etc. Plus maze books and magic trick books. This was mid 70s so they were cheap, cheap!