The Parker Book Fair, held around the holidays in the Small Gym, this year from December 4 at 11a.m. to December 8 at 4 p.m. Every year, the fair is run by a team of three co-chairs who serve three year terms. On their way out this year are Teresa Herlevsen, Eva Laser and Zanna Goldblatt, who are all Parker parents with children across Lower, Intermediate, Middle and Upper School. This team of women focuses on creating a family event that’s lively, community-run, and literacy-driven while still generating proceeds for the library since around 1980.

In front of the gym’s rock-climbing wall and the basketball hoops, tables draped in blue carry piles of books. Stacked, displayed, propped-up and laid down in every category from Science to Picture Books. Little kids trail their parents and poke around teacher Wish Lists or Early Reader bookshelves while middle schoolers glance over rows of colorful YA novels. Freshmen Minnie Dennis can be heard asking her mom if she can please get two books instead of just one. “I love the book fair because there are a lot of new books I haven’t seen before,” Dennis said. “I end up wanting to read all the books I find.”

The Book Fair is powered by these women and their team of volunteers, but all of its books, pricing, and equipment are supplied by their long-time partner, Anderson Booksellers. “It’s like a turnkey bookselling operation and they make all the books available,” Teresa Herlevsen, Parker parent and Book Fair co-chair said. “They deliver them, and whatever we sell, we’re charged for, whatever we don’t sell goes right back to them.

Although Anderson supplies and delivers all the books, the team still tries to personalize the sale every year. “Usually in October, we make a trip out to their corporate office, which is way out in the western suburbs, and we walk through this giant warehouse with aisles and aisles of high-stacked shelves with books.”

“We pull books that we know are new, that we think would be what our buyers would want. Recently, there’s been a bigger push to buy books that reflect the diversity of our school,” Herlevsen said. “They send us multiple copies of those in addition to a long list of books that they just provide this year to any book sale.”

According to Herlevsen, Anderson just informed the co-chairs this year that they don’t have to charge tax. This brings the price of books down, but the team still brings in a nice profit for the Parker library. Herlevsen was hesitant to publish a sales number, and cites the contribution as not being material to the library’s budget, but allowing for the purchase of a few additional books. “All the money that’s raised is donated to the library, and that’s always been the case,” Herlevsen said.

Not all co-chairs handle the dealing with Anderson. As she teaches the next team of chairs how to run the fair, Herlevsen reminded them of the division of labor needed to make the fair a success. “One of us does most of the contact with Anderson, one of us will handle most of the logistics with the school and setting things up and ordering things, one of us does more with marketing and contacting volunteers and writing those emails that have to go out,” Herlevsen said, “we’ve already sort of prepared them for all the various responsibilities.”

The team of three has spent the last three years trying to enhance what is already a “well-oiled machine,” according to Herlevsen. The second year they ran the fair, they tried giving out prizes for every 100th book sold, increasing marketing with more banners and posters, and playing music in the gym to create what Herlevsen called a more “inspiring atmosphere.”

“We haven’t done as much of that this year,” said Herlevsen, “but it’s a really well-oiled machine, so we haven’t had to make a lot of changes.” This year, the team did try to give the Book Fair a facelift and enhance the presence of the sale. “We rearranged it, we ordered new signage for the different book areas, and we ordered new table clothes in the school colors.

The biggest change the team made in the three years was cutting down to one Book Fair per year. “There used to be two book sales – one in the winter, which was the first week of December, and one in the Spring, in April,” Herlevsen said. “Last year, we made the decision that we would not have a second sale in April.”

The second sale caused confusion because it took place so close to the Used Book Sale, as well as being too resource intensive for the amount of revenue taken in in the spring. “It requires a huge effort,” Herlevsen said. “We talked to the administration and said what are our goals with this, they sort of agreed that if we went to one sale that that was fine.”

One sale is still an all-hands on deck operation for Herlevsen and her co-chairs. “On Tuesday morning,” Herlevsen said, “at 7 o’clock we’re there waiting for [Anderson], they arrive, facilities people deliver tables, boxes come. We just start unloading.” Set-up takes from 7 a.m. that morning to about 11 a.m., when the Book Fair typically opens. This four hour effort that is driven by volunteers of Parker parents.“We unpack all the boxes, we organize them by the sections that we have, we set it all up and make it look appealing, so we have nice merchandising,” Herlevsen said.

Volunteers also come for break-down, which takes one hour until 4 p.m. on Friday when Anderson returns with the books. From Tuesday to Friday, volunteers come in and staff the fair at the registers. According to Herlevsen, some of their volunteers spend several hours for several days while some only have a few hours. “We have regulars who have been coming for years and really know the operation, which is helpful, especially for the set-up,” Herlevsen said.

Some parents sign up to read to lower school students, an initiative by the co-chairs Herlevsen says is “in the interest of promoting [the Book Fair] and generating interest but also in promoting literacy.”

Parent volunteers read in classrooms JK through fifth grade equipped with book bags. “When we’re out at the Anderson Warehouse, we choose maybe 6-8 books, we put them in the bag, mark them second grade. We do a write-up for each book for the parent who’s going to be talking to the kids tomorrow,” Herlevsen said. “[Volunteers] sit down in front of the classroom and read from several of the books, they hold them back, they can use our little synopsis to talk to the kids about the book. The kids often come in wanting one of those books that the parents have read from.”

“Our biggest buyers are kids. I would say Lower School and Middle School. The parents will come in with the kids and they spend time browsing and picking things out,” Herlevsen said. “We also encourage the teachers to bring kids in for 15-20 minutes on one day sort of as a little field trip and then often kids will have a wish list of books or we’ll take books and hold them for when they come back with their parents.”

“I think it just reinforces the notion of the community of Parker and also another goal is that it supports literacy and encourages reading, which are also part and parcel of Parker’s approach to education,” Herlevsen said. “It’s not just a monetary event. We make a nice contribution for the library but it’s as important as a community-building event. People love the book fair. They come in and say ‘Oh, I always buy a lot of holiday gifts here, kids love it, they always come in to browse and buy – the community loves it.”

Fifth-grader Naia Renuka Trunkenbrod agrees. “I love the fact that there’s just tons of books for every age. For like toddlers, young kids and just a bunch of fun books in every size and shape. It just entertains a lot of people just to even look for [a book]. It’s good for the community so that we actually learn from the knowledge that’s in books.”