Freshman Emily Benz, freshman Linda Kay Haddad, and sophomore Olivia Krewer are the only students from Huntley High School to win the Read for a Lifetime Achievement Award issued by Secretary of State and State Librarian Jesse White this year.
Sandy Brooks, Huntley High School LRC media specialist, signed up certain students for this opportunity at the beginning of the year. It was a small group, mostly consisting of members of the HHS book club. Consequently, all the winners are involved in Book Club.
The Read for a Lifetime program creates a list of books students can choose to read to win this award. Students must sign up by August and read just four of the 25 books on the list in order to receive the award.
Each time a student finished one of the required books, they would check in with Brooks, who would then send in the title of the completed book along with the name of the student reader. Brooks kept a file of each student’s progress.
Read for a Life Time is the first statewide reading program to target high school student and was designed to promote and encourage high school students to read a variety of texts.
“The thing I like about Read for a Lifetime is that they have some of the classics on their list,” said Brooks. “They even have some non-fiction. There’s more variety.”
This year’s list included classics like “The Great Gatsby” and “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Brooks decided to try this new program in the school and hopes to see the number of Huntley recipients grow. Before Read for a Lifetime, Brooks only committed to the Abraham Lincoln Award book list.
TheLincolnlist consists of about the same number of books, but they are all old enough to be available in paperback so the maximum amount of students will have access to the books.
From this list, those registered in the Illinois School Library Media association vote on the books and the award goes to the most popular book.
Read for a Lifetime offers awards for the individual reader rather than the book, offering a new level of depth to opportunities in the library.
The LRC currently has several copies of every book on both this year’s Abraham Lincoln list and Read for a Lifetime list. Brooks also plans to buy all the books on next year’s Read for a Lifetime list.
