MINERSVILLE - Students at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic School will be spending the next 50 days trying to read as many books as possible.
Principal Katielynn Montag said that the school is teaming up with Scholastic Corp., a publishing company through which the school offers book orders, to take on a reading challenge from now until April 15.
Scholastic sent the school at least two books for every class, but students may choose any books they wish to read.
"We are challenging our school to read 100,000 minutes," Montag said. "We started this yesterday. Five-hundred minutes in 50 days, that's what I'm asking all the kids to do, from pre-K to eighth grade."
She said that he school has done different reading challenges in the past, but "nothing of this magnitude."
Montag is the new principal, who took over Feb. 3 for Sister Thomas Hrynewich, SSMI, who retired.
"A lot of larger schools do it, but it's definitely something that I know our kids can do too," Montag said.
St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic School has 118 students and some said they are looking forward to the challenge.
Tony Cuttitti, a fifth grader who loves football and basketball books, said "it's pretty cool."
"I'm looking forward to it," he said.
Hannah Sponenburg, an eighth-grade student, is also looking forward to the challenge.
"I think it'll be a good way to get in a lot of books at once," she said.
Carol Lauck, English/day-to-day substitute at the school, said that she thinks the students participating is a wonderful thing.
"I love books, and I think children need to be exposed to more reading," Lauck said. "They're excited about it, and it's a good thing."
Montag said that through the challenge, they are hoping to instill good reading habits, so that they continue to read in the future.
Although the challenge will take place in school, reading outside of school also counts, so Montag said that "parent involvement is really important" and if parents are reading to them, that also counts towards the minutes of the challenge.
"I think we'll have something fun planned (when they reach the goal), either a pizza party or ice cream at lunch, but we'll have to make sure we reach our goal first," Montag said.