Students from Muldown Elementary and Whitefish Middle School literally constructed a mini mountain of books inside the elementary school lobby after students brought in roughly 6,000 books during a recent donation drive.

“I had no idea we’d have this many,” said assistant principal John Coyne. “Now we have to go through all of them and distribute them.”

Students in kindergarten through sixth grade participated in the “Mountain of Books” drive. They collected books to be donated and spent two weeks watching the mountain grow. The goal was to promote reading by creating classroom libraries in those grades.

Coyne said classroom libraries will be created with books broken down by genre, age, reading level and interest. The idea is to have books that are convenient to the students, he noted.

“We always want to have something right there for them to read,” he said. “Libraries are great, but putting a set of books in the classroom is just adding another resource.”

The classroom libraries allow teachers to tailor lessons that use the books and encourages students to use the books for independent reading and research projects.

“If a class is studying a certain genre they can have these books to draw from,” Coyne said. “The goal is to keep them reading, especially in the older grades when they might not be as interested. We can have a box full of books right in the classroom that will keep them interested and keep them reading.”

As an incentive for donating books, the classrooms with the most donated books earned a prize. Students who brought in books will have their names entered in a drawing to win a bike.

In addition to the drive at the school, the Whitefish Education Foundation launched a community book drive to collect donations at various locations around town. Businesses and individuals have also been encouraged to “Adopt a Classroom” by providing books or storage bins for the books.