By Chad Koenen

Publisher

Cherry Street Book Store will be taking its expansive book collection on the road next week. The Alexandria-based book store will be hosting a book fair in the Henning School Library from March 25-28. The book fair will run in conjunction with the Henning School parent/teacher conferences, while also giving the community a chance to pick out unique books that have been selected for the Henning area.

“The school gets to select what age group they are going for,” said Cherry Street Book Store owner Emily Regnier. “For Henning they are doing not just grade school books, but family and friends as well.”

This will not only be the first year of a book fair during the spring conferences at Henning School, but also the first book fair that has been held in conjunction with Cherry Street Book Store. 

Henning School Librarian Pam Wiese said she reached out to the local book store as part of the school’s Pages For a Purpose book program. As part of a grant with the Minnesota Historical Society, the school district was required to get pricing from three different companies to purchase new books for the library. In addition to reaching out to large companies like Amazon Books, Wiese said she reached out to a brick and mortar locally owned book store as well.

“We said ‘hey would you be willing to do this’ not knowing if we would get the grant,” said Wiese. “They spent hours working with us on getting that grant.”

Wiese and Regnier continued to have conversations about things that Cherry Street Book Store could offer the school and community library moving forward and the pair decided to have a book fair to coincide with the spring school conferences for the first time. 

Regnier said she began offering book fairs to school district’s shortly after purchasing the book store two years ago “as just a way to support local and it took off because schools started liking what we were offering in terms of the quality and materials of the books.”

Since Cherry Street Book Store is an independently owned book store it can offer books from several different publishers and not just one brand, which provides books from small to large companies.

“By using us they get books from many different publishers and not just one brand,” she said. 

Henning School Library will receive a portion of the books and items like book marks, as well as pencils that have become a staple at school book fairs in the past. 

The book fair will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. from March 25-26, 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on March 27 and 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on March 28. The book fair will be open during school hours to the public. Residents can attend the book fair by going through the district doors at the front of the school during regular school hours. 

The book fair is open to the public and not just students at Henning School.