The NIU Campus Child Care Center will be hosting its annual Children’s Book Fair Oct. 27 through 31 in the Large Motor Room in the Campus Child Care Center, located directly behind Gabel Hall.

The fair will be open 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and on Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Over 1,800 children’s books and parent resource material will be available to purchase, ranging from under $5 for soft-cover books to $20 for hard-cover books.

“Anything that you would normally find in a bookstore you will find at the fair,” said Chris Hermann, director of the Campus Child Care Center. “We’ll have soft-cover infant books, along with early readers books, adult resource material and stuffed animals.”

The fair is a good opportunity for holiday or birthday shopping.

“We carry a lot of the classics and holiday books,” Hermann said. “Some kids might also have a favorite character, like Harry Potter, that gets taken up right away.”

The Child Care Center uses the fair as a fundraising opportunity and has been hosting it for more than 10 years.

“This is our biggest fundraiser of the year,” said Lisa Schmidt, assistant director of the Child Care Center. “In the past, we’ve purchased computers for the classrooms and fencing for the infant/ toddler playground.”

Selling books is the best way to have a fundraiser that is pertinent to children, Schmidt said.

“Reading books is a high quality, wonderful pastime for children and their families, so we thought that a book fair was a logical fundraiser for that audience,” she said.