Champlin Park kids find time to read books, and like it

What teenager preoccupied with iTunes, text messaging, and a zillion Smartphone apps has time to peruse something as slow and archaic as a book?

Apparently quite a few, according to Terri Evans, media specialist at Champlin Park High School.

In recognition of February's designation as "I Love to Read" month, the Brooklyn Park school launched a poll to determine what students' favorite books are.

Hundreds of votes have been cast in the four weeks since the voting started, Evans said.

From a list of 150 books, the top 100 vote getters will be posted on the school website once the balloting is closed at the end of next month.

Lists of the top 100 books will also be available in the media center.

The event is part of a district-wide effort in the Anoka-Hennepin District, with the various elementary, middle and high schools choosing their own ways to encourage reading.

Evans noted that the books being chosen are not those that are assigned or used for class research.

"The reading is mostly pleasure reading, as opposed to research, which they mostly do online," Evans said. "We maybe aren't the stereotype of 'kids not reading,' Our kids actually read a lot."

Participation in the voting is voluntary ... mostly.

"Some English teachers brought their students in to vote," Evans said.

Still, she said additional data from the Champlin Park media center proves her point that lots of kids are reading.

Six years ago, in Evans' first year at Champlin Park, 25,000 books were checked out of the media center, she said. The year before last, that figure soared to 51,000.

Though it dipped to 41,000 last year, this school year more than 30,000 books have been checked out, well on pace to hit or exceed last year's total, Evans said.

Further evidence is how hard it is to keep the most popular books on the shelves.

Top vote-getters include "The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and the four-book vampire series "Twilight," by Stephenie Meyer.

The media center stocks 35 copies of each volume of "The Hunger Games" trilogy, a fictional portrayal of reality TV run amuck in a post-apocalyptic future.

"That's the No. 1 book in our library," Evans said. "They've all been checked out and we have a hold list a mile long."

Evans keeps 25 copies of each "Twilight" book in the library. The media center stocks 10 copies of Lauren Oliver's "Before I Fall," the tale of a girl who gets a chance to relive her life after she is killed in an auto accident.

"They're all checked out," Evans said.

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547