Books as Party Favors!

How do you feel about birthday party favors for kids? This may be an unpopular opinion, but I was very anti party favors for a bit… Until I realized how truly excited children get about them. That said, I still had a hard time justifying buying something small and affordable (i.e. cheap) for every child who might come to a birthday party that we had, knowing that in our own house, those favors often go almost directly into the Goodwill bag. And then I had one of the more brilliant ideas I’ve had lately, if I do say so myself…

We could give books as party favors! Now, you might say, “Hold on there, books are too expensive! We can’t do that!” So, let me tell you how I made this endeavor very affordable:

1. I hit up the sale shelf at our local bookstore. They often have multiple copies of wonderful books, sometimes even hard-backed books, at incredibly discounted prices! For example, I snagged a few copies each of Hello Ocean, Thank You, Mr. Falker, and A Hat for Mrs. Goldman, all very deeply discounted.
2. I ordered some book bundles from Scholastic. Yes, these are usually paperback, but at their prices, you can get sometimes more than 10 books for only $2-3 per book!
3. And, I must admit that I also scanned our bookshelves for never-read books that were in perfectly new condition and added them to the stack, too. We are swimming in books over here, so I figured this would be a good way to purge a few.

All in all, I spent about $75 on this whole basket of books to use as favors! This was way more than we needed for the children attending my four-year-old’s party, but I wanted them to each be able to choose their own book rather than be stuck with what was left.

Then, I simply printed a little gift tag (that I found for free from http://www.coolest-kid-birthday-parties.com), had my daughter sign her name to the cards, and tied a card to each book. So easy!

I still hear from the parents of the children who attended this party about how much they love the books their children brought home. It felt so good to have such an easy party favor that families will use over and over again (and, of course, that promotes literacy and family bonding!).

So, what do you think? Would you ever give this a chance?

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