Encouraging a love of reading in students is important to Oak Harbor School District educators.

The elementary and middle schools, with the help of their Parent Teacher Organizations, held book fairs this week for students.

The book fairs featured books and book-related merchandise from Scholastic.

Each of these schools holds at least two book fairs a year, usually during conference time. That allows students to browse the selection during the school days on breaks or between classes, and then when parents go to the school for their conference, they can make purchases.

“It engages students’ interest in reading,” said Annette Stillwell, a para-educator at Crescent Harbor Elementary. “It all kind of goes together and fosters excitement with the stories and gets them to read more.”

Stillwell said that as soon as the trucks with the book fair merchandise arrived at the school, they unloaded metal boxes that would be unfolded into bookshelves. She said that as soon as they arrive, the students take notice.

“You can hardly contain the excitement,” she said.

The proceeds of the book fairs always go toward benefitting the students, either by enriching the library directly or by giving each teacher more books for their classrooms, or both.

“Everybody wins at the book fair because the kids get lots of books,” said Kari Chwirka, librarian at Oak Harbor Elementary. “The teachers get more books, the kids get more books and the library gets more books.

“Couldn’t be better than that.”

Alice Mikos, the Oak Harbor Middle School librarian, said that although reading is available through many sources such as school and public libraries, she also likes to encourage students to own their own books, not just borrow them.

“When a student owns his own book, that is when he really begins to take ownership of the reading process,” Mikos said. “They will remember the book they bought and owned longer than the book they borrowed.”

Olympic View Elementary also holds a third book fair, near the end of the school year, so that students can find books to read over summer break. Sue Guinn of the PTO said that one is a buy-one/get -one off sale.

“That’s for the parents,” Guinn said. “We like to give the parents the ability to get their kids to read through the summer.”

But no matter how often they’re held or how many books are available for students, they’re always very popular.

“The kids love coming to the book fair,” said Ramona Ferguson, bookkeeper at North Whidbey Middle School.

“They’ve been buying books and are really excited to come in.”