Jessieville pupils win reading award

JESSIEVILLE — Students in the Jessieville School District recently proved that children do still like to read, checking out 1,098 e-books to win the inaugural Vivian Maddox Cup from the Garland County Library.

Jessieville was the only school among the five in Garland County participating to average more than one checkout per student, with a student body of 859 students.

Along with a hefty 3D-printed trophy, the school wins $1,000 worth of credit to purchase e-books of the students’ choosing for the Arkansas Digital Library Consortium.

The award, named after the Garland County Library’s first librarian, Vivian Maddox, is given to the school district that borrows the most e-books per capita from the library in a school year.

Following Jessieville:

■ Cutter Morning Star School District (student body of 691), which checked out 463 e-books;

■ Lakeside School District (student body of 3,430), which checked out 1,251;

■ Hot Springs School District (student body of 3,754), which checked out 826;

■ Lake Hamilton School District (student body of 4,227), which checked out 207.

April McGee, library media specialist for grades 6-12 at Jessieville, said one of the reasons the students did so well was having a block of time each day designated specifically for reading.

She said while some students come into the library and use the computers or the makerspace area — which, she notes, is good — there are also students who come in and simply read.

“I think that there are a lot of people who think that kids don’t read today, and there’s a lot of bemoaning of that fact, because kids want to ‘play video games, and they want to watch TV, and they want to do this, and they want to do that — nobody wants to read.’

But I think this is really just evidence that that’s not true,” she said.