PITTSFIELD — For students at Pittsfield Elementary School, the highlight of the school open house was taking favorite books home.

The Children's Literacy Foundation (CLiF) gave away two free books to each child to kick off The Year of the Book, a new initiative to provide $25,000 in books and activities to selected schools.

The project chose three schools each from New Hampshire and Vermont and aims to provide books for kids, support for teachers and libraries, and encouragement for family reading time.

“We want to involve everyone as deeply as possible,” said CLiF program director Suzanne Loring. “Our goal is to inspire a love of reading and writing.”

To qualify for the grant, schools had to have at least 30 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, and at least 25 percent of students scoring below proficient on NECAP tests. They also had to specify a literacy-related, school-wide goal for the year.

Pittsfield Principal Doug Kilmaster said his school was thrilled to be part of the new program.

“We've done a lot with literacy and we wanted to reinvigorate our relationship with the community and this is a great way to do it,” he said. “It's a very classy program — you get to choose from a menu of activities.”

Schools choose six to eight activities for the year, including three-day writing workshops, local author/illustrator visits, parent literacy workshops, and funds for original school literacy projects.

Core elements of the program provide books to school and public libraries, and book giveaways at kickoff events.

At Pittsfield, children arrived a half hour before the kickoff began. Seated behind a line of plastic cones, they chattered and pointed out their favorite books.

“Look, there's a NASCAR one,” a boy said. “I want the dinosaur one,” his neighbor answered.

Site coordinators Karen Trefry and Sylvia Lennox enjoyed the children's enthusiasm. “The thought of them getting great books — we're really excited about this,” said Lennox.

Trefry was impressed by the selection of books offered. “It was really hard to take them out of the box and not start looking through them myself,” she said

Duncan McDougall, CLiF executive director, said every Pittsfield student will receive seven brand-new books over the school year.

“They're all very high quality books, many are award-winners,” he said.

McDougall read a story to the 200 students and then set them loose to choose their new books.

Brothers Biagio and Demarco Donini chose books about pirates and monsters. “I think this is great,” said their mother Casey. “I know they get a kick out of picking their own books.”

Jared and Mackenzie Landry couldn't wait to open their books and sat down on the gym floor to read with their grandfather, Rob Landry.

“A lot of people say kids don't like books nowadays,” said McDougall. “But if you give them great quality books on subjects kids want to read, they love books.”

Pittsburg and Berlin are also New Hampshire Year of the Book schools; Vermont schools are Brownington, Johnson, and Newbury.

For more information about CLiF, go to www.clifonline.org.

kgarofalo@newstote.com