How a capybara took over the Scholastic Book Fair

A couple of times a year, the auditorium gets transformed into a kid-friendly bookstore, and the elementary-schoolers get out of their regular classes to shop for their favorite titles — just like many millennial and Gen Z readers remember from our youth.

This time around, my kid was excited to come home with Buffalo Fluffalo, a bestselling picture book about a self-important buffalo who gets cut down to size. But the real must-have item on my 7-year-old’s list was not a book at all, but this furry capybara diary.

The fur journal (I am trying to make a portmanteau here and failing) is a nationwide sensation, consistently one of the most popular items at book fairs, according to Laura Lundgren, chief marketing officer for the children’s book group at Scholastic. “Kids are obsessed with these diaries,” she told me.

Selling over 4 million copies a year, the journals feel like a sign of the times — for good and ill. On the one hand, elementary-schoolers’ reading scores continue to languish, and kids are less and less likely to pick up a book for fun. In a time of widespread concern about the decline of reading, the idea that kids are choosing a capybara over a storybook feels a little dispiriting.

On the other hand, in the face of increased AI dominance over all of our lives, the popularity of a physical, analog journal may tell us something hopeful about kids’ enduring desire for self-expression. And it’s a reminder that even as adults try to impose our priorities and anxieties on kids, they have their own lives and preferences that have nothing to do with us.

With more than 100,000 events every year around the country, Scholastic Book Fairs are school fundraisers that also aim to encourage student literacy. “It’s inviting kids in to read, even if they don’t think of themselves as readers yet,” Lundgren said.

Though the fairs focus on books, they’ve long stocked a variety of other reading- or writing-related items like pens, pencil toppers, or posters — including the “hang in there” kitten posters that have become a symbol of a certain kind of millennial kitsch.

Journals have been part of the mix for decades, but the fuzzy capybara, in particular, feels very of the moment. As cute animals go, capybaras have surged in popularity in recent years, buoyed by adorable videos of their antics. Just last week, a capybara went viral after escaping from an English zoo and then sunning itself beatifically in the countryside.

It’s not hard to see why kids like journals that effectively mimic stuffed animals — other variants include a fuzzy unicorn, butterfly, and Stitch. Lundgren points to the “tactile nature” of the journals: “It feels special to them. It feels very custom. It’s not like the other school supplies that they might have in their lives.”

The capybara version even has a little pocket containing a tiny baby capybara with a carrot on its head, perfect for getting stolen by a younger sibling and triggering a giant fight. Win-win!

In all seriousness, though, one goal of non-book items at the Book Fair is to bring in reluctant readers who might not yet be excited about books. “We don’t want to show up and feel like homework,” Lundgren said. “We want to show up with all of the joy and all of the fuzzy capybaras, and we want to really invite kids into the experience.”

Right now, getting kids excited about reading feels as hard as it’s ever been. In 2023, the share of 13-year-olds reading for pleasure nearly every day dropped to 14 percent, the lowest ever recorded, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Elementary school kids’ scores on nationwide tests of reading have been on a downward trend for the past 10 years, with little sign of reversing. Many fear that AI is already undermining students’ ability to read, or even think clearly.

Some students “love the slowness and the pacing themselves of writing on their own,” Sherisse Kenerson, a multilingual learning specialist and founder of the club, told me.

Writing by hand is associated with a host of benefits, including better learning and retention. Writing and reading are also deeply linked. When students are unsure about how to spell a word, it can help to write it down a few different ways, Kenerson said. “You’re able to pick it up the correct way by seeing it.”

Kids probably aren’t thinking about literacy skills when they pick up a fuzzy capybara at the book fair. But they may be thinking about the next thing they want to write or draw, which feels like a hopeful sign in a time of concern about AI killing kids’ creativity.

The potential to create is part of the draw of the journals for kids, Lundgren said. “If they see a graphic novel, or if they see a visual illustration that they love, we want to encourage them to express themselves too,” Lundgren said.

Beyond the cute furry exterior and the lined pages within, there’s another feature that draws kids to journals. Anthony Angelillo, 19, remembers his days at the Scholastic Book Fair fondly. Journals were a hot item even then, he told me, and “what made those very compelling was that they always had these little locks on them with these very specific keys.”

The lock made the journal feel secret, Angelillo said: “You lock your thoughts away, and then no one else sees them besides you.”

Scholastic markets the fuzzy journals (many of which also feature a lock) as tools for “creators,” not writers or artists, very intentionally using the language of YouTube and TikTok influencers. But for many kids, writing in a diary isn’t about creating something for public consumption — it’s about keeping a record of their thoughts that’s only theirs to see.

In a time of social media overexposure and adult surveillance of kids’ lives, experts and young people have told me that kids crave spaces that are just for them. Maybe for some kids, a diary can be that space. One that happens to be inside a capybara.

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My older kid is reading the Unico Awakening series, about a unicorn with amnesia navigating new and mysterious realms. I know less about these books because my kid is reading independently now, but I can vouch for the fact that the art is lovely, and the second book includes some cool jellyfish creatures.