Hi Taylor! I love that you do ten minutes every day! I am thinking of trying that method next year!

My library has definitely been a labor of love! I have collected books in a few ways. First, every summer I ask everyone I know for their old YA books. I work with teens during my summer job and they are happy to help. I also reach out to adults on Facebook who I know read YA.

Second, we go to a conference every year that has a vendor who sells overstocked YA books for $2 each! This is where I’ve gotten most of mine. I have put a decent amount of my own money into it, but when $200 gets me 100 books (and I want to read a few myself!) it’s not too bad. If you’d like to check them out, they have a website: https://www.books4school.com/

I also use my own money when I see Scholastic BOGO sales at our school. I’ll often do one or two small orders from the First Book website each year. I have also gone to Goodwill and Half Priced Books to book hunt.

I did do one Donor’s Choose project for some, and I don’t know why I don’t do it more often! I got a ton of great titles and I was amazed by how willing total strangers were to donate to my little classroom.

The last way has been from school. Once a year my department and I will go make puppy dog eyes at our principal and ask for some books. He never turns us down if we all ask together. Our librarian is also working on a professional goal of increasing the school’s independent reading. She has been grabbing the books from the other libraries in the district that are being retired and then passing them to us instead.

In short, I will beg, borrow, and steal whatever I have to do to get the books, but I rarely pay full price. When I do buy them on Amazon, it’s only ever because I want to read it. In that case, the classroom gets it when I’m done, and that keeps a lot of the book clutter out of my home 🙂 Hope that helps!