Every year the Big Sandy Masons give away bikes in their Bikes for Books Program. It is a Nation-wide program that is considered one of their most successful program encouraging students to read. This year they gave away three bikes in Big Sandy alone. Students in grades 3rd, 4th, and 5th could participate in the program simply by reading a book. Every time a student read a book he/she would get a ticket and put it in the can so the lucky winners name could be drawn. So, even if they only read one book during the year they would have a chance to win a bike. However, this year there was a large number of books read.

Dick Thornton gave a short presentation of how many books were read. The third grade read 34 books. The fourth-grade class read 73 books, but the fifth-grade class read 139 books. In fact, there was one girl who had read more books then all of them combined. She had read herself 1,600,000 words. There was a boy who had read 1,400,000 words. All together the students did a good job of reading more than 6 million words this year. The most books read in a single year!