SANTA ANA : Auction Saw Bidders Sold (on Reading)

When the autographed Big Bird poster came up for bid, Jena Valle thought of her younger sister’s love for the yellow-feathered “Sesame Street” character and jumped out of her seat, bid card held high.

The bids rose quickly from $300 to $400 to $600, but 11-year-old Jena stood unflinching with bid card held high and her free hand on her hip. At $850 her forehead creased, and at $900 she sat down, her bid card dropping to her lap.

“Eight-hundred fifty is as high as I could go,” she said.

Nine hundred bucks may seem like a lot for a child to spend on an autographed poster--or on anything, for that matter--but in this case, they had an excuse. The “money” they used was legal tender only at Loma Vista Elementary School.

Jena and her fellow fifth-graders spent Tuesday cashing in on all the reading they did throughout the school year by bidding on items at the school’s Incentive Reading Auction. For each book students read and did book reports about, they earned up to $100 in scrip. The money, which students kept track of in bank books donated by a local bank, could be spent only at the daylong auction, which featured more than 150 items for bid.

“They could read as many books as possible,” said fifth-grade teacher and program coordinator Sally Mazza. “When students know they can get these great things at the end of the year, it gives them their incentive to read books.”

The 120 fifth-graders read about 2,000 books throughout the school year, with Keith Collins, 11, leading the pack with 44 books read and $4,080 to show for it.

“I thought of the auction and figured if I read, I could benefit,” said Keith, who blew all but $480 of his earnings on a $3,600 New York Aquarium gift pack that included a “Seals” sweat shirt, a stuffed white whale and a book on dolphins and porpoises.

Among the items students vied for were autographed photos of Johnny Carson, the cartoon Simpsons and the cast of “Perfect Strangers”; a Rick Dees gift pack that included a “Top 40” sweat shirt and bumper sticker; tickets to Graceland in Tennessee, and an original script from “Murphy Brown”--which, it so happens, was followed in the bidding by a pen used by Vice President Dan Quayle. Teachers and parents joked that they hoped the latter two items would sell as a set.

The auction items were donated from people and organizations across the country, Mazza said.

Third-grade teacher Roger Snofsky was the auctioneer, racing through the bids so fast that some students found themselves making bids they couldn’t cover, or being quickly aced out of items they’d set their sights on.

Jennifer Wilhelm read 31 books, reaping $2,160 throughout the school year, only to fall $460 short on a bid for a New York Rangers hockey puck. Her classmate, Henry Escarazaza, walked away with it instead.

“I really wanted it,” 11-year-old Jennifer said wistfully. “It may be worth some money some day.”

But minutes later, Wilhelm soothed her loss with a bargain-basement bid on an autographed photo of newscaster Connie Chung. She snared the 8-by-10 photo for $210, down $40 from where the bidding started.

“I don’t really know what I am going to do with that,” she said.