Yellow Pages
BIG LAKE — Some elementary school students read for the thrill of adventure, to be transported to far-off lands or just for fun.
Others read because they want to decorate their principal like an ice-cream sundae.
Big Lake Elementary School students got to do just that Friday after they shattered the reading goal Principal Brian Isakson set for them earlier this month.
He told the students that he didn’t think they could read 15,000 pages. But the students answered his challenge.
They hit 15,000 pages and kept on going. By the end of the two-week period, the kindergarten through sixth-grade students had read 56,777 pages.
Students read a variety of books, from “Curious George” to “Harry Potter.”
Sixth-grader Jake Sampson read 1,562 pages, but that wasn’t unusual for him.
“I love to read,” he said. “My mom’s a substitute teacher.”
He said he reads after he goes to bed at 9 p.m., often until late at night.
“Last night I was up reading a ghost story,” Sampson said. “I was scared out of my wits.”
Students only had to write the title of the book down and then the pages they read, said Sheri Anderson, a school volunteer who organized the event and the recent book fair.
Kindergartners were allowed to let their parents read to them for the challenge, Anderson said.
Top kindergarten student Seth Tift had his mother read 850 pages to him for the challenge. His mother, Melissa Sternhill, said he enjoys the time he spends with her at night when she reads to him.
“I was hoping we could hit 2,000 pages,” she said. “I think this was a really cool way to promote literacy.”
As Isakson prepared to be decorated like a sundae Friday, students streamed into the school’s gymnasium. They chattered excitedly and bounced on their toes.
“Do you want a shower cap?” Anderson asked Isakson.
The principal, dressed in a navy-blue T-shirt and white shorts, shook his head and smiled. “No,” he said. “I’ve got to take this like a man.”
Isakson then shortly praised the students’ efforts and donned a giant bowl made of hula hoops and plastic sheeting.
He told students that next year they would have to read 100,000 pages, and then he took a seat on a wooden stool.
Students approached Isakson tentatively at first, but as he sat there, chocolate and strawberry syrup dripping from his short, black hair, they became more brave. One student shook a whipped cream can and shot it into Isakson’s open mouth.
Soon, the screaming crowd of elementary students demanded more: “Down his shirt! Down his shirt!”
Finally, after one student topped him with a maraschino cherry, Isakson stood, and the syrup, half-melted ice cream and toppings sluiced down his front and onto the blue tarp below.
He blinked several times, his eyelids sticking together from the syrup that dripped down his face.
“I didn’t get enough whipped cream in my mouth because Isaiah was too short,” he said.
n Kate Martin can be reached at 360-416-2145 or at .
