Viewmont Elementary fourth-grader Abigail Alongo sat on the floor during an assembly near the end of the school year, waiting for the announcement of the Road to Success reading challenge winners.

“I read at home, but I started reading even more when I heard I could win a bike from the contest,” she said. 

From late fall through the late March, she read 15,625 minutes. 

“I really like Percy Jackson and the Hooky series,” she said. “My stepdad reads Harry Potter to the family; he has the most amazing voices for the characters.”

During the challenge, Abigail also read Greek mythology, The Baby-Sitters Club series, mysteries and suspense stories.

For reading 27 hours, she earned a ticket into the bike drawing. Additional reading minutes also equated to
more tickets.

When the projection revealed she was Viewmont’s winner, her face showed disbelief. Her hands immediately flew up to cover her face, almost covering her big smile.

“I didn’t think that it would be me who won. I get to learn how to ride a bike now,” she said. “We waited a long time to find out because it was in alphabetical order by school and Viewmont was at the end. When my name came up, I just felt—I don’t know how to describe it—I felt happy and excited at the same time.”

In addition to a gift certificate for a bike, Abigail and her parents were invited to a dinner at Discover Gateway Children’s Museum along with winners from each school in the state that participated.

Nearby Liberty Elementary students also participated in the challenge, with 90% taking part and 80% regularly logging in minutes. The school’s winning student was sixth-grader Milo Allsop, who read more than 25,600 minutes, who also received the invitation to attend the Road to Success Celebration Gala.

“Our school in total read close to 650,000 minutes,” said Longview Principal Becky Te’o.

Viewmont had 226 students opt in the reading challenge. They read a total of 375,501 minutes, with the highest reader clocking in 30,117 minutes. Forty-nine students earned tickets for the bike drawing and fourth graders in Nic Scott’s class accounted for the most minutes read, said librarian Emilee Barnett.

“When I looked at their total numbers, I’m impressed,” Barnett said. “They wowed me. They really took to it and read so much. I knew we had some really good readers, and I thought those readers would participate, but I was amazed that so many kids stepped up who hadn’t been big readers before and kicked it into high gear. It was fun when they would come in and tell me they had read an hour last night and discuss their books with me.”

During the challenge, she saw improvement in students’ reading.

“There are so many other things kids do with their time, sports and dance, and whatever else they’re into, but recently I’ve really seen kids getting excited about books and say how much they enjoyed the book. A lot of them are excited to read the next one in the series. I’ve had kids say, ‘I love reading now, and I’m reading every night now,’ and my heart just melts. I don’t know if it’s from this program, or if it’s just the right book, but some of our students, they light up on fire and they love reading. We’re making some good progress with reading,” Barnett said.

During the challenge, some sixth graders who took part of the Battle of the Books contest were able to count the minutes reading those books, she said.

At the end of the school year, many Viewmont students also got to celebrate their reading goals with a school space-themed reading party, which Barnett organized.

With the end of the school year, she tailored a summer program, “Adventure is just a page away” to keep Viewmont students reading. 

Similar to the state’s program, there are different levels of incentives for amounts of minutes read. Students also have fun opportunities such as time traveling with a book set in a different time period, finding authors from their state and reading one of their books or flying away with a book that has a bird in the story. 

Abigail is planning to read—as well as bike—
this summer.

“When I go to my grandparents’ house, I bring books,” she said. “I’ll take some more Percy Jackson since I’ve only read the first two. I love reading a lot. I’m learning about other people’s lives and relating to it. I like being in that moment. Reading a good book makes me happy.” λ