Like many cash-strapped schools, my son’s school will host a Scholastic Book Fair  that I will help man. It's a win-win proposition: Kids get hooked on reading and our school acquires both cash and books for its library. Seriously, what can be better than that?

Except Disney and Nickelodeon have managed to finagle their marketing tentacles in something as innocuous as the book fair. After browsing through our catalogue, which included a lot of cartoon books, one of our moms -- who happens to be a kids TV producer -- floated around this Boston Globe article: “Taking consumerism out of school book fairs.”

The article echoed what most of us already believed to be true: The Scholastic Book Fair pushes its sponsors' cartoons on our children rather than a pure love of literacy. When I asked Ari to make his selections, he chose the books with cartoons on the covers. Ugh.

A small but growing number of schools are turning their backs on Scholastic nonetheless. These parents and educators say Scholastic carries too many books and other items featuring cartoon and movie characters that are thin on literary merit. They say the novelty pencils, calendars, posters, and other paraphernalia Scholastic offers is more about turning children x into consumers than it is about encouraging them to read.

‘‘It got to the point where I didn’t care how much money it made for the school; I cared that I was standing in front of those books and telling parents they’re good,’’ says Tullie Warshauer, library teacher at the Birch Meadow School in Reading. The list of ‘‘those books’’ she ticks off include Scooby-Doo, Dora the Explorer, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

What does Scholastic have to say about this?

Alan Boyko, president of the book fair division of Scholastic Inc., which is a global children’s publishing and media company, says it works hard to respond to a school’s individual requests for books and that even the sales flier can be customized to eliminate products a school doesn’t want to offer. ‘‘We have two goals: to get kids to read and to make our book fair fun,’’ Boyko says. ‘‘It doesn’t resemble a library; it resembles a fair. If ‘Spider-Man’ is what it takes to get a reluctant reader reading, then I’m guilty.’’

Considering the books cost only $3.95 a pop and Ari does read books with educational value, I let him pick one or two cartoon books. I think one was SpongeBob. I figure this is better than candy, the TV or a noisy toy.

Our school doesn't plan to cancel its fair, but one mom volunteered to actually select the books -- go to the company's warehouse to take a look. While I wouldn't go that far, I liked this other mom's suggestion: