Read all about it! Betty Gibson School has won a literacy jackpot.

The school’s library shelves, once almost bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, are on the verge of overflowing after the school won one of 20 Indigo Love of Reading Foundation’s prizes for $60,000 worth of books over three years.

“It’s a huge blessing for our school,” said teacher Angeline Templeton, who is the school’s reading recovery teacher.

Templeton and fellow teacher Karleigh Harvey-Zink put together a lengthy application last year and word came down in May that the Betty Gibson application was one of 20 across Canada that had been accepted. The application included an optional video that showed the bare shelves of the school’s library and a couple of students looking longingly at the diminished supply of reading material.

Over time, said Templeton, the school’s library inventory was reduced due to attrition — books were damaged or lost — and budget cuts made it difficult to add replacements.

Last Tuesday, the school held an open house to celebrate what it called embarking “on a new literacy journey that will see its library dramatically transformed.”

Templeton said she reacted in lottery-winner style delight when she learned over the phone that her school’s application had been deemed one of the winners. “We were on a conference call and they were just asking a bunch of questions, but it was actually a call to tell us we’d won,” she said. “I went a little crazy.”

The theme of the application, said Templeton, was that the Betty Gibson library was “the heart of our school” and that winning $60,000 in books “would be getting to the heart of the matter.”

School officials have so far received about $11,000 worth of the first year’s $20,000 supply. The shiny new books were lined up last Tuesday on a number of tables in the school’s multi-purpose room — representing about one-sixth of the total the school will have two years from now.

“Each book costs about $25 on average,” said Templeton, who said learning to read is undoubtedly the most important factor in succeeding in life. “It’s the key to success for every child’s future,” she said. “Without literacy, there’s not much opportunity for growth.”

The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation was established in 2004 to promote early literacy. Since inception, the foundation has contributed $7.5 million, including the $1.5 million donation to 20 schools across Canada this year.

School principal Phil Vickers said there is a large segment of the student population at Betty Gibson — 32 per cent — whose first language is either Mandarin or Spanish, so learning to speak English by reading is vitally important.

Templeton and Harvey-Zink had the pleasant task of ordering the books. A couple that were high on the priority list were Mandarin-English and Spanish-English dictionaries, which were put into use immediately.

As a sideline to the new books that were on display Tuesday, the school also had a gymnasium full of more than 25 tables filled with recycled books from all literacy ranges — children to adult — that had been donated. Students and their parents and anyone else attending the open house were urged to take as many as they wanted from the “freecycle” tables. “Bring a bag if you want,” Vickers said he was telling people.

The reading-related activities at Betty Gibson Tuesday were all happening during “I Love to Read” week, an annual celebration that focuses on the importance and value of reading.

At Betty Gibson, there will no longer be excuses to not read. The library shelves have been restocked, and more — a lot more — are on the way.