Book fairs are back!

By: La’Nazia Johnson

April 9, 2024

H-F hasn’t had a Book Fair in 20 years. Fortunately, this year H-F librarians broke that record by hosting a Book Fair from April 15-19. During this time, students were given the opportunity to attend the Book Fair during their English classes, lunch periods and even after school, as well as during its open night hosted on the 18th that was open to the community as well as students.

H-F librarians Leah Sauvage, Jolyce Abernathy and Alicia Rodriguez all contributed to the idea of hosting a Book Fair. The purpose of the Bookfair was to reinstate H-F’s library as a resource for all students and members of the H-F community.

“We wanted to expose students to the library, and we want them to know that a library, whether it’s in your school or a community, is a source of information and welcoming to everybody,” said Sauvage.

The Bookfair was also an opportunity for students to buy and own books themselves, rather than borrowing them from the library. 

“We wanted students to have books in their hands and in their homes and we wanted to cultivate a level of reading in the school,” Sauvage stated.

Students were excited for the Bookfair and enjoyed the event, taking the opportunity to buy and own their own books. Senior Kamaura Collenan was one of the many students who appreciated the Bookfair. “Yeah I enjoy it, I like reading books and I think it’s nice to buy books and keep them as our own rather than going to the library and borrowing them,” Collenan said.

“The Bookfair was very nice and the book selections were very vast and diverse, there were books for everyone. There were even books for people like me to take a trip down memory lane,” freshman Kameran Hogan said.

Even students who weren’t exactly interested in reading had fun during the Bookfair. “The Bookfair was interesting, I played UNO in the library and enjoyed the time I had outside of class,” freshman Sarah Solomon said.
The books for the Bookfair were supplied by a small business called Bookie’s, located in Chicago. Bookie’s was used in place of a more well known organization such as Scholastic due to a wider range of books that would interest H-F students. “Scholastic unfortunately doesn’t have many titles that are high school level,” Sauvage said.

Bookie’s wasn’t just chosen due to its small size, but for the freedom it gave the library staff to contribute to the selection of the Bookfair and represent H-F’s students in various texts.

“We  also wanted to be able to have a chance in choosing the texts, and we wanted texts that would represent our student’s interests and also the student body. We wanted to make sure they were feeling represented in the texts that we chose, so the librarians spent a while cultivating lists for Bookie’s to choose from,” Sauvage shared.

The Bookfair wasn’t originally going to be part of H-F’s open night, however the decision to keep it open was decided after considering the connections that it would produce between H-F and the community.

“When we met with Bookie’s initially and we talked about the parameters of them coming in, they mentioned that with other schools that they’ve worked with that they have usually stayed late for the community one night. So we decided to make it more than just the Book Fair available to the community. We wanted to make sure that there’s an event. We wanted to expose people to libraries and also to make the connection between the community and H-F high school,” Sauvage said.

In the end it seemed that the goal of the H-F librarians was met, many students enjoyed the Book Fair in their own ways.