Hungry for [English] Books

When I first moved to China, I felt deprived of English reading.  The only material I could get my hands on was the local expat magazine, and it was only published monthly.  This was also during my pre-Kindle era, where I naive to the spiffy-ness of downloading most texts with just "1-click."

For a good year, I indulged in a smattering of online reading.  It wasn't until my second winter in Kunshan that we took a trip to Shanghai and chanced upon an English foreign bookstore.  Let me tell you, what a delight it was to see something in English – It’s soooooooo delightful!

I saw children’s literature, all which I wanted to add to my classroom library.  Sadly, flipping to the back cover, I found a discouraging price tag.  Most books were priced $2-3 over their intended US price, and other’s were insanely expensive, like the Eric Carle pop-up book of the hungry caterpillar that was over $100.

I have never, and will never, pay full price for a book if there are garage sales and Half Price Books Stores!  Guess it looks like I will have fun book shopping on my US trips!  I feel a little too proud about prices back home, and do my best not to make a scene in the store when I react to the price.  (I'm used to paying $.25 - $.50 per book.)  I’m sure Chitrak is tickled pink that my spending is a little more controlled here!  J

A sincere apology to all my current and future students.  You'll have to convince the school to help build our classroom reading collection, or start donation box in town for the time being.  ;-)

Here's the address in case you're interested in taking a look:
Shanghai Foriegn Language Bookstore, SBT main branch
390 Fuzhou Road, near Shanxi Nan Rd
上海外文书店总店  福州路390号，近山西南路

Here are some pics I took for my principal to show her the variety of leveled texts that are available.  There are all sorts of books.