Topics : EDUCATION : Principal’s Challenge Is One for the Books : Students surpass Linda Kaminski’s request to collectively read for 250,000 minutes.

Exasperated by television’s enormous influence over children, some educators will do almost anything to get their kids to read.

Not Linda Kaminski.

Kaminski, Allendale Elementary School’s principal, thinks it is inappropriate to bribe children to read with gifts or special treatment or a promise to eat worms, as one educator recently did.

“If you want children to sustain an interest in reading, there has to be intrinsic motivation,” she said.

That’s why when Kaminski challenged her 500 students to read for a total of 250,000 minutes in 25 days, she did not mention the reward that would await their success.

When the students, who are in preschool through the sixth grade, surpassed their goal, their reward fit their achievement. Kaminski brought everyone out to the school’s playing field, where they could sit on the grass and read alone or with friends.

A pigtailed 8-year-old named Erica Morris sat on a purple and white striped towel. Her large eyes grew even larger as she turned the page of her book. “It’s a mystery,” she said as she held the book out to display its cover. “It’s my favorite and so is ‘The Secret Garden.’ ”

Erica said she enjoys reading books because of all the new vocabulary she learns and that she tried to read two chapters every day to help meet what parents and teachers called “the Kaminski challenge.”

Six-year-old James Wilson agrees. “I like books better than TV, because sometimes TV is too scary,” he said.

Kaminski is so proud of her students’ success that she is going to challenge them to read 1 million minutes next year. “Reading is something to love,” she said. “I want them to discover that for themselves.”