TRADE YOUR BOOKS, VIDEOS AND MUSIC AT SWAPTREE

I am an avid scifi/fantasy reader or perhaps just an avid reader. I keep the books I love for passing onto the next two generations of avid readers in my family. The bulk of current fiction and stuff I didn’t really love often seems to grow like coat hangers in an empty closet. What to do with all the accumulated things like Cd’s I don’t listen to anymore, movies I don’t watch and books I have read. WhooHoo, there is a place I can trade that stuff and get something I want in trade.

I have blogged about PaperBack Swap and frankly like it a little better than SwapTree. http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php PaperBack Swap takes paperbacks and hard backs but does not do music or videos. I like it better in the book area because I don’t have to automatically find someone who wants what I have to trade and who has what I want in trade. You bank your trades. If you have something someone wants, you sent it out to them and you pay the postage. In return you get a book credit and you can choose out of the thousands of books something you want. What I like is you don’t have to do it immediately. I like to fill in missing books in trilogies or series so I often wait until those books are put up before I use my banked trade. It works well and I have gotten a lot of good books.

I just started using SwapTree and have gotten a couple of books. I like that I can trade Cd’s and videos and get books in return. You post what you want to trade and then you see what you can get in return. So far I have not been able to get much in the scifi/fantasy category. I guess because I haven’t put much of that category up on their site. It seems like it is another good alternative to letting things just pile up. http://www.swaptree.com/WebFrmUserHomePage.aspx

Since the average postage seems to be about $2.61 to send someone a book, you are getting a book you haven’t read for that low price. You can’t buy a new book for that anymore and with SwapTree you can get a video or a cd for the same price. My experience with SwapTree and Paperback Swap has been positive at this date.

The Mushroom Planet Series by Eleanor Cameron

My first love in books is Science Fiction/Fantasy. I love to read and will read a phone book if nothing else is available. However good planning generally makes that unnecessary. A book in each room you frequent, one in the car and your PDA loaded with Baen Free Book downloads means you seldom need to read phone books. The first book I can recollect reading,that was definitively Science Fiction was “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet”. Tyco M. Bass was a scientist who had wonderful adventures. For some reason I remember “Mr. Bass’s Planetoid” as my favorite of the Mushroom Planet series.
I was impressed enough with the series that when I was a 5th grade teacher 14 years later I read it to my students. They too, seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure out of the series. The series appears to be still in print and available several places. A good site to find the series is:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/eleanor-cameron/

If you want a great introduction to the genre for your children, this is a terrific series to start their adventure.

Nice review of “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet”. http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/hbreview5.html

Good overview of the author and the series.
http://oldchildrensbooks.com/cameron.php