BOOKS AS POPULAR AS ICE CREAM.

Byline: Sharon Cotal Staff Writer

CANYON COUNTRY - First-grade teacher Lauren Pfenning says that student Andrew Wright usually exceeds her expectations, but even she was surprised when he surpassed her challenge to read for 4,000 minutes.

During the school year, Andrew read for 12,821 minutes - more than 213 hours - before and after class.

For the past three years, Pfenning has issued the challenge to her students at Cedarcreek Elementary to encourage extracurricular reading throughout the school year. Students who reach the 4,000-minutes goal - 66 hours and 40 minutes each - are rewarded with a pizza party with their teacher.

This year, for the first time, every student reached the goal, earning an ice cream party for the entire class, who as a group read a total of 117,511 minutes.

``It's way above what I expected,'' Pfenning said. ``I'm extremely proud of all the kids. They blew me away with the amount of minutes they read.''

Andrew said he sometimes got tired from all that reading, but his mother encouraged him to keep going, and he liked to ``find out about things'' from books.

``That's why he's a strong reader, because he reads so much,'' Pfenning said, adding that parental support is important in reading. Andrew and his classmate Max Archuleta, who spent 11,045 minutes reading, have that support.

``Their parents encourage them to read, and that's important,'' she said.