The experience seems to have lodged in the memory of many of the adults these children became. For some, Scholastic book fairs provided a distinct brand of uncontaminated joy that exists only in childhood. Because of Scholastic’s national reach, pining for that joy can be a collective activity, which makes tweets such as this so popular and painfully relatable:

I’ve spent my whole adult life chasing the high of a scholastic book fair — regular skeleton (@Merman_Melville) October 3, 2016

It is with this high in mind that I walked into a Scholastic book fair at Woodfield Elementary, a school of about 300 students in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. When my tour guides, a pair of regional Scholastic sales representatives, arrived, they led me from the main office, down hallways covered in posters and drawings, to the library. As we approached, my heartbeat quickened in anticipation, just as it did so many years ago. We turned a corner and stepped inside.

For a split second, it felt as if someone had sucked all the air out of the room. This was not the Scholastic book fair I remembered.

It certainly looked like one. Metal bookshelves lined the room, topped with brightly colored banners designating genres—science, adventure, animals. Schoolchildren flitted from section to section, giggling as they went. A person dressed from head to toe as Clifford the Big Red Dog, the star of a well-known Scholastic-made book series, waved his fluffy red paws enthusiastically.

But unlike the fairs I attended in elementary school, the sight was underwhelming. The setup, sparkling and grand in my mind, turned out to be rather plain and small in the bright, fluorescent lighting. I felt a pit of disappointment in my stomach. Memories are notoriously malleable, and my recollection of Scholastic book fairs had become warped over the years. Each time I had thought back fondly on the fairs, I added a coat of rose-colored paint to the experience. Now that magical sheen had been stripped away.

I didn’t say any of this, of course. I came to Woodfield Elementary to interview the kids, not warn them of adulthood’s cruel tendency to render formerly wondrous things mundane. I didn’t have much time to process my reaction anyway, because the students, a group of fourth graders, wanted to give me a tour of the fair and talk about their favorite books.

Charlotte Francke likes Wings of Fire, a fantasy series about dragons. “I completely recommend it,” she said. “I just want them to come out with a second one, because I’m kind of mad at the ending. They killed one of my favorite characters.”

Her classmate Darby Hitt prefers thrillers. “I like mystery books because they leave a mystery every chapter and I get really excited to read the next one,” she said.

The students guided me through the sections. There were Picture Books, for the younger readers; Chapter Books, for older readers ready for some narrative; Friendship Tales, stories of kids and their furry companions; Fearless, stories of adventure and survival; Fun Facts, for a hint of science; and Girl Power!, a section I didn’t remember from my own experience. (A Scholastic representative later told me the section was added in 2017.)