photo by: Joselyn King

Theo Birch, left, and Felix Riggi, both third grade students at Steenrod Elementary School, stand with their entry in the Ohio County Schools Literature Fair. The fair took place Thursday at Wheeling Park High School.

Elementary students from across Ohio County Schools indicated Thursday they do read, and they enjoy doing it.

The school district hosted its second annual elementary school literature fair at Wheeling Park High School. The event is sponsored by the West Virginia Reading Association.

There were 156 entrants across 15 categories, explained Raquel McLeod, educational services director for Ohio County Schools. Students could enter as an individual, as a pair or as an entire class.

The literature fair is similar to a science fair in that students are asked to read and do research on a book, then prepare an informational backboard to be displayed at the fair describing the book.

Backboards were required to contain information about the book, such as its title, author, publisher and publishing date, as well as a description of its main characters, setting and plot summary.

The top three winners at each school competition qualified for the school district literature fair, and winners on Friday would go on to a regional fair set to take place later at West Liberty University.

“It is really inspiring to walk around and look at the projects, and see the time they put in to it,” McLeod said. “What’s even more important is this fosters their love for reading.

“We know if we can start it at this young age, it will continue all through life.”

She sees that today’s youths are reading.

“This was optional. This wasn’t required for any student to participate,” McLeod continued. “To see we had 156 entries, and some pairs so we had about 250 students participating. It’s a pretty nice number for the second year of having this fair, and I believe it’s going to continue to grow.

“I believe kids like to read. As much as they love electronics, they are seeing the illustrations and touching the pages of the book.”

Abby Duplaga of Bridgeport, author of the “Ambitious Abby” children’s reading series, came out to the literature fair to provide encouragement to student Aubrey Haney. Haney’s entry in the Ohio County Schools fair was an author study of Duplaga.

Haney was asked if she enjoyed Duplaga’s book, which centered on being a good leader.

“I liked it because reading it made me a better person,” she said.

Theo Birch and Felix Riggi, both third grade students at Steenrod Elementary School, did their presentation on the book “I Survived The Titanic, 1912,” and competed in the historical fiction category.

Both said they learned facts about the Titanic from reading, such that it had four smokestacks but only three were functional for venting smoke from the boilers. The fourth smokestack was a non-functional “dummy” stack that served only as decoration.

Reed Galazer, a fourth grade student at Middle Creek Elementary School, also competed in the historical fiction category. His choice for his presentation was “I Survived The Nazi Invasion, 1944.”

Last year, he competed with an entry “I Survived Pearl Harbor.”

“I like the ‘I Survived…’ books,” Galazer said. “So I kept going.”

He noted he learned from the book how Hitler tried to imprison people for no reason. He agreed it was an important lesson to learn today.