They came not one-by-one, but box-by-box, carried into the Edmonds Boys and Girls Club.
Hundreds, thousands of free books — for the boys and girls.
“Let’s go read! Let’s go read!” shouted 6-year-old Ben Rigney, a first-grader at Lynndale Elementary. “Let’s go read!”
The 1,000 gently used books were donated March 13 as part of Read Across America by customers at the Edmonds PCC Natural Food Markets in partnership with the literacy organization Reading Tree.
The groups had been collecting the books for months.
It took only minutes for the kids at the Boys and Girls Club to work themselves into a frenzy.
Some clutched thick piles of free picture books to their chests, others raised the books triumphantly high above their and still others — the most sedate of the kids — actually sat down, or sprawled out, to read.
Underneath the club’s foosball table, two girls read “Scooby Doo on Zombie Island.”
Nearby, two brothers, Salihou and Ebrima Fatty, slowly read through “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.” All across the club, kids clumped into small groups to review their books.
Reading Tree has helped individuals in North America donate over 1.5 million books back to children who will read them, marketing manager Lynette Crumity said.
But reading is only part of the group’s mission.
“We want kids to read. That’s the biggest thing,” Crumity said. “But it is also about recycling, so it reduces everybody’s carbon footprint.”
The group might also — judging by enthusiasm— be reducing consumerism.
“Any time, I would choose books like these over an iPod,” said Molly Bansemer, a sixth-grader at Sherwood Elementary, who had scored herself copies of a Nancy Drew book and “The Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Yes!” shouted sixth-grader Zac Kingsbury. As he nodded vigorous agreement, he clutched nine books under his right arm. “I love books. Books are better than video games.”
“Books rule,” Bansemer said.
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