Forget Career Fairs, We Need Book Fairs

It’s a Friday, and school’s packed with students carrying small coin purses and getting in lines to head to the Scholastic Book Fair. Some are there to get stacks of books, others are pulled towards the miscellaneous gift section with glittery pens, delicious-looking shaped erasers or diaries which will never be used for their intended purposes. 

The Scholastic Book Fair brought a certain excitement. When the catalog arrived the week before, I would grab a bright red marker to circle anything and everything I was hoping to snag.

Yet, this was elementary school. Fast forward to college, and the closest thing to the Scholastic Book Fair experience is trudging to the campus bookstore to drop $200 on a textbook which will be used twice.

Nowadays, college students’ main purpose for visiting the library is either to print something, study or occasionally grab a required reading book for class.

The joys of going to the library have been diminished by the stresses of prioritizing assignments, tests and productivity. Instead of associating the library with a whimsical place to find a variety of profound stories, students now associate the library with stress, exhaustion and the pressure of looming deadlines. 

Students no longer have the structure to experience cracking open a new book without having to worry about memorizing the story for an exam or essay. Even students who had no interest in reading could find solace in art books or the movie sections if they still owned a DVD player. 

This kind of exploratory browsing doesn’t have to disappear — it can be reimagined for the digital age. Public libraries and university systems, such as Loyola, offer unprecedented free access through apps like Libby and OverDrive for ebooks, Kanopy and Hoopla for streaming films, and extensive research databases like JSTOR and Project MUSE, which students can explore purely out of curiosity.

When classes in secondary school made library visits, it meant exploring each shelf for personal favorite stories or even new editions. Seeing the colorful bindings that spelled out “Junie B. Jones,” “Pinkalicious,” “I Survived” and “The Magic Treehouse” brought a sense of wonder to learning which shouldn’t get lost in the margins of our busy college lives. 

Somewhere between the prologue and epilogue of education, we lost the plot, and reading became assigned, not desired. The library became a place to survive, rather than a place to explore.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way anymore. A pop-up Scholastic Book Fair in the Cudahy library would be a perfect addition to campus life. No required readings, no essay looming, just tables sprawled with books — thrillers, graphic novels, poetry collections, cookbooks and memoirs. There could be a discount table because every college student loves a good deal. 

Loyola could also promote local authors by hosting book events with local bookstores, featuring a section of unique book finds and bookmarks or offering themed gifts that serve no practical purpose but spark joy anyway.

Scholastic Book Fairs used to do something we’ve lost —  they made learning feel communal. Strangers would share books they bought at the fair and gush about their excitement to read them and soon come back for the sequel. And if it wasn’t a book, we were bragging about an invisible ink pen we couldn’t wait to use to prank a friend. 

Bringing back Scholastic Book Fairs to college campuses isn’t just about nostalgia or selling books. It’s about rebuilding spaces where learning feels like an adventure we’re all on together, where someone else’s passion for a story you’ve never considered reading becomes a doorway to something new.