Pine View Association and Barnes and Noble created a Read-A-Thon for Sarasota kids

Reading is blasting off for the Pine View Association’s Read-A-Thon after this weekend. 

About 272 kids showed up to kick off the school’s Rocket Read-A-Thon to collect their goodie bags, search in a scavenger hunt, listen to a few stories and of course, get some good reads for the Read-A-Thon. Children’s illustrator Frank Remkiewicz, who drew the Froggy book series, was also there signing books, reading aloud and doing a demonstration of a Froggy drawing. 

If you haven’t been in the children’s section of a bookstore recently, it’s quite the lively place. The classics, like “Harry Potter” and “Magic Treehouse,” are still there, next to books about growing up and being strong, as well as modern day events broken into bite-sized pieces for young minds. 

Between the scavenger hunt and the $10 gift certificate in their goodie bags, a lot of kids were too excited to stay still for long. They ran through the store, as kids do, toting a book or several, or trying to work out the clues on the scavenger hunt. Many were just in search of a calm corner, and most of the corners in the children’s section were claimed before too long. 

Teachers Cynthia Wozniak, Rachel Lenerz and Chris Lenerz read aloud to kids gathered on benches. Just outside the circle were kids and families hunched over books, either reading or trying to sort out the massive pile they had gathered for the day. 

Pine View’s Read-A-Thon will go until Sept. 20 as kids try to read 500,000 minutes amongst themselves to raise $50,000 for projects, classroom materials and STEM activities, according to an email from Pine View Association about the event.