As Katherine Ryssel flipped through books at the Coeur d’Alene High School library Monday, she recognized a lot of titles from her childhood.

“Scooby-Doo was my life,” the freshman exclaimed as she showed her friends the picture book she had found.

Ryssel and her classmates were helping organize the mountain of material the Jingle Books holiday fundraiser brought in.

Jingle Books collected more than 45,000 children’s books this year, smashing its goal of 40,000.

The books, donated by community members and local organizations, will allow each public school student in Kootenai County from kindergarten through third grade to receive six books for the holidays.

“I don’t know how we’ll top this,” said Dave Eubanks, co-founder of Jingle Books. “Obviously I’m not the only one who sees the value in this, and it doesn’t cost the taxpayers a single penny.”

Starting today and lasting the rest of the week, the Coeur d’Alene School District will host book fairs where K-3 students can choose their books. Jingle Books encourages kids to choose books they not only can read, but want to read.

Jingle Books’ purpose is to combat illiteracy in North Idaho by giving kids their own books.

“We know kids learn to read in kindergarten through third grade, and in fourth grade they read to learn. If they are not proficient in reading by that time, they will fall behind,” Eubanks said. “One in 300 K-3 kids in poverty has their own reading book at home, so we aim to change that. We are changing that.”

Eubanks wanted to give a special shout out to United Way of Kootenai County for getting donation boxes put into local businesses. He also said Goodwill Industries donated 9,600 books, which helped tremendously.

On Monday, 10,000 donated books were brought to Coeur d’Alene High School to be sorted.

Students helped unload box after box of children’s books into the library, where even more students helped organize them into three categories: Kindergarten and first-grade reading level, second-grade reading level and third-grade and up.

“I’m so excited for the kids; they’re going to be thrilled,” said Carol Zimmermann, the librarian’s assistant at CHS who was helping sort books. “I have three grandkids and they can’t wait for this.”

Some books had to be taken from the donation piles because they were inappropriate. A few copies of “Fifty Shades of Grey” made their way in, as did a pamphlet titled “A Marijuana Guide for Parents.”

But a lot of the books took some of the high school kids back to when they were learning to read.

“I’ve seen a lot of books here that I couldn’t imagine going through my childhood without,” Ryssel reminisced. “Now we get to pass them on to the next kids so they can have fun reading the same books we did.”