Many thanks to our wonderful PTSA for coordinating the overwhelmingly successful Fall Book Fair. PTSA President Emma Obern said: 

"WOW! What an incredible Elementary Book Fair. Thank you to everyone who made it happen.  We are so grateful for your donations to our coin drive, families giving students money to purchase books, the decorations (including the awesome jungle display, and the trees in the library), volunteers setting up the Fair, working the registers, finding books, and handling the line at the lollipop-pull, and everyone in school who helped in so many ways. We had record breaking book sales and went through 1800+ lollipops! Thanks to you, we donated $7000 of new books and resources to the school during this Fair.  At the Spring Fair, every PreK - 6 grade student will choose their own book to take home and PTSA will pay for them.

Pizza Parties will be organized over the next few weeks for the four homerooms who donated the most to the coin drive: Ms. Hurley, Ms McGee, Mrs. Mitola, and Ms. Ormiston.  Ahead of the Fair we also held an art contest to draw favorite book characters.  Mrs. Wasserman picked 24 winners from the 120 entries.  Everyone earned a prize (watercolor paints) and the winners all received $5 Book Fair gift certificates. Three homerooms won $25 gift certificates in Book Fair Bingo, and we provided the prizes for the 5^th Grade Pumpkin Contest. PTSA teamed up with the Galway Public Library to offer some extra events, like the Scavenger Hunt, with more $5 Book Fair gift certificates as prizes.  The library also had some of the craft activities we would have run on Family Fun Night. Thanks to Julie Pasieka, a PTSA volunteer and Youth Services Coordinator at the Galway Public Library for working with us. FYI, there are lots of amazing programs for everyone at the library.

It was wonderful to be back in school and give our children some of the fun stuff they have been missing. I can't tell you how happy everyone was to see the Book Fair; students, parents, teachers, aides, librarians, custodians, everyone.

Ahead of the Fair, our coin drive was epic! Bringing in $4,262.72 to buy books for homeroom libraries.  (This all counted towards our sales.)

The PTSA also gave every homeroom money to buy books. Some received more than others to ensure every homeroom had at least $100 to spend at the Fair.

We gave the school library $500, along with the proceeds of the lollipop-pull during the Fair. The total for the lollipops was $914.91. If you were anywhere near the morning lollipop-pull, you know it was crazy! Lollipops were 50 cents a pull and every lollipop won a prize.

Our total sales (excluding tax) were $14,245.89! 

We have never broken $10,000 before.

The average sales for the last 10 Book Fairs is $6,422.34

We are totally thrilled we have more than enough to buy every Joseph Henry Elementary student a book at our Spring Fair.

We are very grateful for all our volunteers and everyone in the Elementary School who made this possible. Thank you to all our Galway Families who supported our coin drive, set up eWallets and gave their children money to buy books. Seeing how excited the students were about all the books and getting to read them, is why we love the Book Fair."