Hey, kids! Read 600 minutes, get cool stuff 

SALT LAKE CITY — Thirty-four years ago, at a time when the marathon running boom was in ascendance, the national Public Broadcasting System organized a Reading Marathon designed to get kids into the habit of reading books.

If a kid read 600 minutes during the month of November — an average of 20 minutes a day — he or she would qualify for a prize.

Utah's PBS affiliate KUED — now known as PBS Utah — signed on as a participating station.

After a few years, the national PBS network stopped promoting the event.

PBS Utah never did.

It started out innocently enough. In the inaugural event in 1992, just a couple hundred kids, kindergarten through sixth grade, successfully hit the 600-minute threshold. Almost all of them were from the Salt Lake Valley. For their reward, it was easy to fit them all in the same room at the Super Reader party held at the Salt Lake County Fairgrounds at the end of January.

Participation has grown every year since, especially since preschoolers were included.

Last year, 33,000 participated — enough to fill the Delta Center almost twice.

This year? That total won't be known until Nov. 30, when participants log into pbsutah.org/reading and submit their numbers.

But the safe bet is that it's going to keep growing. For one thing, this year's campaign is aligned with the Cox administration's Utah Reads Initiative, taking aim at a worrying decline in the percentage of kids who are reading at grade level in our schools. And then there's the free stuff. The days of the Super Reader party at the Fairgrounds are long gone, replaced by the PBS Kids Utah Adventure Pass — a pass that includes no less than 30 coupons granting kids free entry into all sorts of adventures all around the state.

There's everything from go-karts at Toad's Fun Zone to the Hogle Zoo to the St. George Discovery Site to ice skating at Millcreek Common to the Clark Planetarium to the Ogden Nature Center to a free ride on the Ferris wheel at Scheels. And many more. The Salt Lake City Public Library will give a free book to any kid who asks for one (in January and February). The University of Utah athletic department has donated 10 free child passes to men's and women's basketball games, plus 50% off for paying adults. The Utah Shakespeare Festival offers a free kids ticket and half-off for additional tickets. Reading has never been more rewarding.

There is no limit to the number of kids who can participate in the program. The only book not on the list is a rule book. There isn't one. All reporting is on the honor code.

"It's not a competition," said Annie Frazier, PBS Utah education manager. "We want families to recognize that it's more than just a grade or a score in standardized testing. We want them to see that reading is a tool that opens up the whole world."

Ebooks and audiobooks qualify, but Frazier likes to stress the value of a "real" book.

"We really encourage a book in a child's hand," she said. "There's something that is really important with brain development when we are actually holding the book."

Why does PBS Utah keep doing this? James Davie, who has been station manager since 1998, has a ready answer: "We feel it's very much at the heart of who we are and what we do. Service to children has been part of public television's DNA from the beginning. If you think back to 'Sesame Street,' which has been on the air for over 50 years, teaching kids the value of literacy and helping them learn those sounds and letters, and then 'The Electric Company' and the 'Reading Rainbow' and now the 'Super Why's Comic Book Adventures,' all are about education and strengthening kids."

The reading marathon "is the biggest thing we put on every year," Davie said. "It's that important to us. Reading enriches us in so many ways. It's a way to have adventures, it's a way to learn about the world, it's a way to sometimes escape from the world."

Adds Frazier, "Reading can be an escape from some of the demands of the world. My mom taught me that a library card is the only card that you will get that can buy you nothing but give you everything. I've never forgotten that. Reading is how we learn about the people around us and understand them. It helps us create communities that are caring, where we're looking out for one another, and I think that begins with getting outside of ourselves. Books are a beautiful way to do that."

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