Living a Faith-Filled Life

I have to say that one of the highlights of teaching for me is hosting a bookfair and offering book orders. I know, it means I'm a book nerd, but I don't care! I love, love, LOVE books.

So, now we deal with bookfairs and book orders in a Christian school. We're basically down to two book clubs that I've seen. Scholastic is the mammoth, but there's also a Christian book club. Now, I'd tell you the name of the Christian book club, but I don't have it for two good reasons:

• I have seen it twice in the last five years, and it doesn't appeal to my class. The books are generally for little kids and are overpriced.
  
• I just googled it and can't find it. They need to work on marketing.  Or, maybe they went under.

So, obviously, I use Scholastic. Scholastic has swallowed up the competition in the past several years. They have quite a variety.  And, there's the problem. In my Christian classroom, where I talk about focusing on the good, positive things in life, I hand out a book order that seems overrun with monsters and death. 

I really want to use the Scholastic resource, and I do maintain that there are plenty of treasures to be harvested for the faith-filled student.
Here's how I handle to negatives from our monthly book order:

• If the issue is very heavy-handed on the whole death, destruction, and monster stuff, we skip that month. I almost never hand out October book club orders, because they're almost completely obsessed with negativity.
  
• When I hand out a book order, I always like to point out my favorites or books that look good. I point to the positive. Often, if I hype something, I see kids order those books.  And, I'm glad to recommend positive, moving books.
  
• Once in awhile I also warn them. I try not to draw attention to books that I don't condone (you know how preteens can be - they'll want the one you say is garbage.) But, occasionally there is something that is so death-obsessed or something that paints evil as good, that I feel compelled to warn them about it.
• Rarely do I actually refuse to order a book for them. I've done it twice now. It's a personal decision.  I actually tell them that if they really want it, they can take their parents to a book store. That way, it's on them. I know that's censorship, in sense, but I am there to be a representative of Christ, not of the devil. 
  
• I also know that some parents wouldn't allow their kids to get certain books, so I remind students to check with Mom and Dad first. 
• I also realize that some books I wouldn't let my 11 year old read, I would allow my 14 year old to enjoy. I see a big maturity difference between the two. I frame some of my recommendations that way as well. With maturity comes discernment (usually,) which will answer some of the questions about appropriateness of mature themes.

We just finished our bookfair (also Scholastic.)  I normally pull a few books off the shelf that I know would offend some of our church families (or me!) We only have room for so many books, so when I pull those off, I have room to stock more appropriate choices. I'm sure there were plenty of books that could still be considered less-than-healthy reading for the young Christian, but I didn't have time to read them all!  I just pull things based on the cover (if it clearly doesn't fit the Christian life) or the reputation that precedes it. 

One of the interesting things is that I always get a few boxes of Christian books from Scholastic.  And, I always pull things from that area, too. We are a Lutheran school, so last year's book about the Pope didn't fit our Christian walk. I left it in the box.  This year, I pulled one about how Mary aids in our salvation (so NOT Lutheran!) I even found one that talked about how we decide to have faith. Again, I pulled it. 

So, between my recommendations on book orders and the selective bookfair, I think I have a very wide variety of books for our students. I hope I've been judicious enough to keep books that might lead them astray while still offering many different reading opportunities.