Country Home Learning Center held its annual book fair right before Christmas. For those of you who don’t know, all the money raised through the book fair is used to replenish our schools’ book fund, which is used to buy new books for all of our schools throughout the year. This year, we raised $6,000 through the book fair bringing our Book Fund to over $9,000 total.

The book fair is not, however, all about raising money for the schools. It’s also about getting kids interested in reading. One of the best ways to get kids reading is to give them books they want to read. So, we went around and asked some of our staff which books their kids have enjoyed the most:

Curriculum Development Coordinator, Catherine O’Brien, says her favorite books from this year’s Book Fair are the Look Alikes books by Joan Steiner. In the Look Alikes series, Steiner assembled three-dimensional combinations to generate everyday scenes like train stations, city streets, general stores, parks, and zoos. It was one of the New York Times Book Review’s Notable Children’s Books of 1998, and Time magazine named Look Alikes one of the best children’s books.

Our teacher Ms. Mary Jane’s Pre Excel class enjoyed a variety of books from Skippyjon Jones to Barbie the Princess & the Popstar Storybook, but their favorite was the Scholastic Discover More: My Body. Scholastic Discover More: My Body is an “educational book that the kids love,” says Ms. Mary Jane. My Body tackles children’s inquiries about their bodies in an extremely simple and suitable way. Each part of the book focuses on a specific body part or movement so that a child understands. Topics like breathing, the food journey, and blood are touched on, as well as fun subjects such as hiccups, earwax, and goosebumps. Ms. Mary Jane explains that “it is a great educational book, and it does a wonderful job explaining the different parts of the body. A child in Ms. Mary Jane’s class says that his “favorite part is the part that talks about the food pyramid.”

An Assistant Director, Teresa Gomez explains that her favorite book is Dinosaur Roar. She explains that the book is interactive, and her son “loves pushing the roar button every time” they read the book.

Overall the fair was a huge success and everyone at Country Home enjoyed participating. We want to thank all the families who bought books and we hope you and your children are enjoying them. We look forward to filling all of our schools with new books books throughout 2013 using our Book Fund!