NILES — When Howard-Ellis principal Michelle Asmus announced Friday morning that students in Jamie Zimmerman’s fourth grade class would be getting two free books to take home over the summer, there was a collective gasp of excitement.   

“You are getting two books to take home that are yours to keep that are at your reading level,” Asmus said. “Who is excited about that?”

In response, students raised their hands.

To get their books, Asmus called their names one by one, handing out a packet which contained a different fiction and nonfiction book, as well as a reading log, list of pop-up libraries and places to get free lunches over the summer. The packet also contained some tips on how parents can engage their children in reading over the summer.

The book giveaway is part of a district-wide program created by a reading task force, made up of teachers and administrators who wanted to create an alternative summer school program. Before school lets out Tuesday, every student in the Niles district from kindergarten to fifth grade will get their own packet with the same materials.

Melissa Prestine, the dean of students for Ring Lardner Middle School, said the free books that were passed out Friday were just the first step in the task force’s plan to engage children in reading throughout the summer.

Through a partnership with the Meet Up and Eat Up program, students will be able to use the list in their packet to find out where they can get a free meal and visit a pop up library. At the lunches, students can pick more books to keep and interact with the teachers who will be there to ask them about their reading progress.

“Hopefully it is to help them have their own little library coming into the summer,” Prestine said.

Through at-risk funding, Prestine said the district was able to purchase 10,000 books to distribute to students this summer. To help with handout packets, Ring Lardner Middle School students in the National Junior Honor Society bagged the books and information before they were handed out.

Back at Howard-Ellis, students could not wait for the summer to begin to start browsing through their new books.

Fourth-grader Becca Hollars, 9, thumbed through a copy of “A Handful of Stars” by Cynthia Lord. In the book, Lord, a Newberry Honor author, tells the story of a small-town girl’s friendship with a migrant worker’s daughter, spurred by a runaway dog.

Hollars said she was excited to have some reading material for the summer months.

“I am happy,” Hollars said. “I like to [read] a lot, but I don’t have a lot of books.”

Asmus said the staff had been eager to distribute the books to the students. She said she hopes having something new to read will encourage students to keep turning pages.

“We are thrilled. We can’t wait to see how students utilize this over the summer,” Asmus said.

Prestine said they hope to make the book giveaway a tradition, while also growing the program so that more stations are set up over the summer with even more reading material available.

“We have written grants already [so that] down the road [we can] purchase books in the future,” Prestine said. “[I] hope that it is such a success that we have to grow it in next year.”