if your library system is less than ideal....

[ProudGrandma]

how much money do you spend on good books for your kids?

 

We have 2 small libraries close by (within 10 miles) but both of them are...well...small....and don't have a lot of books that interest my kids. One is very willing to buy books that we request, they just can't afford to...the other one has their own ideas as to what they will buy...and accept requests, but never fulfill them.

 

we have a really good library about an hour away, but that is too far to go weekly...or even every other week...and the town where it is, there is nothing else to draw us there...no wal-mart or even larger grocery store, so I would be only driving 2 hours (both ways) for the library.

 

so I am fearing that I need to buy more books for our kids, but that can get expensive too. What do you all do, in this situation?

 

 

Can you get library books in Kindle format from either of these libraries? Easily worth the price of a Kindle if they have a decent selection.

[Um_2_4]

I don't see the ages of your kids, but I started by buying "lots" of readers off ebay. I just bought DD a lot of horse related books and it came out to less than $2/book including shipping. That is one way to build a home library fast. I often see lots of RL4-5 books, etc. The only thing is you don't get to hand pick, so there may be a few that don't interest you DC. And "hot" series tend to go for more, but still usually cheaper than buying individual copies of amazon or the like.

 

I've also had good luck here. Moms selling off Hist. fiction or science/math "living books" as a lot.

 

My local library also has an "opinion" about what they will or will not buy :glare: .

[ProudGrandma]

the ages of my children: dd12, ds11 and ds8

[jar7709]

A lot. It is funny, some people in our homeschool group think we have a good library system, a few of us think it is less than good. I'm in the latter camp. I might be just uber-picky, but I want the books I want, and I don't want to have to make do with books that may or may not be available when I need them, or not be quite what I am looking for. I have a rough "book budget" and put in a big book order every month. I know I'm fortunate to be able to do it this way, but as I look around and see myself surrounded by a home library that imo is better than the one down the street, to me, that is worth it.

[FriedClams]

I have a horrid library system nearby. Horrid.

 

I buy used. Book sales. Online. Paperback swap.

 

My BFFs town (5 hours away) has an AMAZING used book store so I take lists and plan ahead.

 

I let parents of kids who are older than my kids know I love hand me down books. I've gotten to a of books this way. I am happy to go pick up boxes of books!

 

Used curriculum sales.

 

Buy new and resell when you're down.

 

Unless they're free or cheap or we're dying for a book I don't buy for the kindle. I want to resell and get some of the investment back.

 

 

[Um_2_4]

the ages of my children: dd12, ds11 and ds8

 

So ranging from 3rd and up reading level?? Tons of lots in those ranges on ebay. Try searching for RL4-5 book lots. If you want books on particular topics, justa dd in "science" or "history", etc.

[FriedClams]

Sell when done not down. LOL!!!!

[Mommy22alyns]

Ours is one small library and ILL costs money even if they can't find the book. :confused1: I get a lot of classics free on the Kindle, and there's a huge used bookstore in town not far from my daughter's gym that has some great deals. I spend maybe $200 or so a year just on book basket books.

[UrbanSue]

We hit up a couple of large used book sales each year, always look for yard sales and library sales, and, when necessary, pay $4 on Amazon. Over the years we've acquired a better home library than our local library. You might check your local libraries for annual book sales this summer. They are generally unloading some of the best stuff, you know "old" books that "no one" wants to read anymore. And booksalefinder.com will alert you to book sales in your area. Keep a list of good authors handy and hit the sales on an early day where you get really good stuff and then go on a half price or "bag sale" day and get stuff that isn't as much of a priority.

[Ameena]

Paperbackswap. Try the box of books service on PBS - no credits and you only pay shipping.

 

We have a wonderful library, but I don't use it as I'm horrible about getting them back on time and the fees were eating me alive. Here I can buy kids books for anywhere from .10 each up to .75 each, depending which thrift I shop and if it's sale day or not. When the fees start at .25 a day per book, it's cheaper to just buy the book at a thrift shop!

 

Another option would be to ask a homeschool mom in an area where there are cheap books to buy a bunch and ship them to you. You'd have to pay for the books and shipping to you and maybe $25 or so to the mom doing it, but it would probably be cheaper than anything else.

[stripe]

Another option if you have an ereader but your library doesn't support this, is to join the Free Library of Philadelphia and access their online book collection. Anyone can join. For those outside Philadelphia, it's $35 a year.

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/register/getcard1.cfm

[shawthorne44]

I would get an e-reader for the free books. Advantage of reading the classics on an e-reader is that you have the dictionary look-up right there. I assume your libraries don't have e-book checkout. Many do, though. Another advantage is that they are more likely to be high-quality books if people loved them enough to remember them long enough for them to be free and then to expend the effort to transfer the format to e-books.

 

Step#2 would be find out if the nearest big city has a "friends of the library" sale. Mine has a yearly sale, and on the last day it is $20 for everything you can cram into a paper grocery sack. That would be worth a trek and take the kids.

 

Step#3 would be to find a good used book store. Go maybe once a month and give the kids parameters on how much you are willing to buy. As a kid, I went with my mom to one that bought at 25% of marked retail, and sold at 50% of marked retail. Even when the book was 30 years old. We "rented" a lot of books for 25% of retail. I knew that I could fill a hand basket as long as it wasn't too stuffed. Mom was really liberal on the book budget. Retail book stores was anything I could hold in one hand (balancing doesn't count). Libraries, it was anything I could carry in one trip (creative stacking allowed)

 

Kids are more likely to read something they pick out.

[justme824]

I have a hefty book budget. It isn't that we have a bad library system as a whole, it's that our system charges for holds of any kind and the branch within a reasonable distance is horrible - super small and terrible selection. I have to use the hold system to get what I want and it gets expensive between that and late fees, so I may as well put the money towards the books I want.

[Hunter]

In most states, you can get a free library card at the main library in the capital city. That library often has downloadable Overdrive and Kindle books. Sometimes you can find friends and relatives in other states that will let you use their library card # to download books.

 

I bought these as a backup, so I always at least have something.

Yesterday's Classics ebooks

Heritage History ebooks

 

I have several sets of encyclopedias. My sets are all complete, but when my boys were young we only had broken sets. The sets overlapped, so we were fine.

 

Dover has some very large collections of classics for cheap. They are printed on thin cheap paper so ship cheaply as well as are cheaper to start with.

[briansmama]

I'd go the kindle route and also look into:

1. Inter library loan- you may not need to drive an hour to the other library if you can request books through ILL.

2. If ILL is not an option, I'd look at what online resources the far library has to offer. If they offer digital downloadable ebooks and other services (ours has great online subscriptions to things like Mango Spanish, Tumblebooks, and World Book Encyclopedia online), then it may very well be worth it to drive out there to get a library card to use the online services. You could also plan a trip out once per month for actual books. If they do offer good online subscriptions, I'd invest in a Kindle.

 

We save so much by utilizing our library. I don't borrow books as often anymore (I try to buy them whenever possible, but ebooks for kids are usually not very expensive) but we do save a ton by accessing the library subscriptions from home for free with our library card.

[Ecclecticmum]

Our library (and we are counted as low-tech area) has an online website, and I can order/hold stuff from throughout the region, plus all the way down to near the city. Our library is the size of a large caravan....and looks like one too. rofl.

 

Its quite terrible (including the inter-loans), and doesn't have anything we usually want. I just have to use keywords instead and try to find something worthwhile that can somehow be a replacement for whatever we need.

 

We used to have a LARGE charity store (like mall sized, seperate departments, huge) and most of their books were $1, and there were obviously a lot of homeschooling families & teachers who somehow donated stuff to there, as I found a lot of good stuff. Unfortunately, it closed down. We used to do most of our shopping/supplies/clothes shop there, and still haven't found a replacement place. Now about twice a year, I get the chance to go to the other charity stores and find a book or two.

 

Consequently, our home "library" is mostly made up from a mix of two of Sonlights cores and the hauls we got at the charity shop. Other than that, when purchasing curricula/resources secondhand off someone, I keep an eye out on their classifieds to see if they have any cheap worthwhile books. And I made it a new rule that once a month I purchase a book or two (picture or picture & a chapter) from bookdepository, based off of a reading book list I have.

 

So I mostly try to purchase here & there. I ocassionally order from the library, but considering it takes 1-2 weeks for lackluster books to arrive, I don't use it much (the books that are at the library either consist of outdated non-fiction, comic books/really bad young kids books, or stuff meant for teachers like "Fire Trucks! Here's the fire-engine toot-toot!"

 

My purchase this month is a couple of graphic novels from an online 2nd hand bookshop, to hopefully interest DS (he's very visual) So I managed to find graphic versions of a few books like narnia.

[Um_2_4]

I"m so glad to hear my library is not the only one that charges for each Inter Library Loan (even if that can't find it!). It's $5 per book here!! I would go broke! Cheaper to buy a $4 used one off amazon LOL!!