There is something about the smell of new books and stationery that takes me right back to school days. I can boldly say that not many other smells compare to it. Our school used to reopen for the new session during the first or second week of April, the days leading to it were quite exciting. New books and notebooks, so neat and pristine, waiting to be dog eared over the course of the year. I would also get some of my brother's old books and I was quite lucky because he was so neat that his books looked like they had hardly been used.
We had to cover our books and notebooks with brown paper sheets, topped with another layer of clear plastic sheets. We would gather scissors and tapes, clear the space on the dining table and get started with an assembly line of sorts. When we were younger, our parents helped us with putting covers on the notebooks. I could never match up to how neat my dad's method was. I still am quite a lousy gift wrapper, a skill I still haven't inherited from him.
Sometimes we put sticker labels on the notebooks. There were all sorts of stickers available, colourful ones, decorated with cartoon characters or flowers, but I preferred plain ones, or even writing my name directly on the brown paper.
Of course, I loved this entire process, for the excitement of new books, the thrill of writing my name along with the name of a new class and yes, savouring the smells of fresh paper and stationery!