As I was reading an article about the re-release of The Babysitters Club, a series of girls’ books published by Scholastic Inc., I was suddenly reminded of one of my favorite parts of elementary school, something I had completely forgotten about until I read the word “Scholastic”: Scholastic book orders.

Since time immemorial, Scholastic Inc. has run book clubs and book fairs to encourage kids to read. When I was in elementary school, our teachers would hand out Scholastic book order forms a couple of times a year, and we’d take them home, choose the books we wanted to order and then hand the forms back to the teacher, who would send them off to Scholastic. And a few weeks later, the books would be delivered to the classroom and handed out to all the kids who’d placed orders.

I distinctly remember that the order forms had a thin, newspapery feel to them, and I think you had to put an X in the tiny box next to the books you wanted. As someone who was a bookworm before she even knew how to read, choosing which books to order was always an agonizing task. My parents were generous and never restricted me to just one or two, but even so, it was hard to whittle down my choices from a world of possibilities.

Once you had made your choices and returned your order form, then you had to wait, since it took a few weeks for the books to show up. Book delivery day was the really thrilling bit, as there would be a stack of soft, shiny new books at the front of the classroom, and you knew that some of them were yours—and if you’d ordered a certain number of books, chances were you’d be getting a bonus kitten poster or bookmark as well. Score!

A quick Google of “Scholastic order forms” tells me I’m not the only grown-up with fond memories of Scholastic book orders—not to mention the book fairs, when Scholastic representatives would come to the school and sit behind tables loaded with books ripe for the picking. Oh, the joy of being able to shop for books in the middle of a school day! Life doesn’t get better than that, I tell you.

I guess I get that kind of thrill through Amazon now; I check the books I want and then wait expectantly for the package containing my shiny new purchases. And while there are benefits to this—I can order as many books as I want and it takes just two days for them to show up, not two weeks—I have yet to get a free kitten poster from Amazon.