A rewarding kiss

Deirdre Newman

Monique VanZeeBroeck closed her eyes, bent down and prayed that the

dog slobber would subside for a moment. Although she had practiced

kissing Maggie before, it didn’t make it any more palatable.

VanZeeBroeck, principal of Newport Coast Elementary School, was

kissing Maggie, a large mastiff dressed up as a reindeer, to reward her

students Thursday for reaching their reading goal by leaps and bounds.

The goal, set out in early October, was for the 406 students to read

more than 100,000 pages during the past 2 1/2 months. The students

resoundingly responded by reading three times what they had to get

through.

“It’s great. That’s what we wanted,” VanZeeBroeck said. “We wanted

them to know we appreciate all of their hard work.”

VanZeeBroeck started the Wonderfully Exciting Books reading program

when the school opened last school year. Last year, the students read a

whopping 300,000 pages, enough to earn a $5,000 governor’s reading grant.

The money was divvied out among the teachers so they could stock up their

classroom libraries.

This year, VanZeeBroeck decided to divide the goal into three time

periods. As the first one ended in winter, she said she wanted to create

a fun incentive to spark the students’ reading frenzy.

“We tried to get a real reindeer, but when that didn’t happen we had

to think about plan B,” VanZeeBroeck said.

Plan B: dressing up teacher Judy Hilbert’s mastiff, Maggie, in antlers

and glitter.

As Maggie licked her lips in anticipation of the big moment, the

students held their breath.

Splat.

Cheers ensued as VanZeeBroeck gingerly kissed Maggie two more times.

“I would gladly kiss reindeer any day because you guys did so well

with your reading,” she said.

“It was hilarious,” said sixth-grader Erik Wu, adding that he enjoyed

the opportunity to read his favorite author, Matt Christopher, who writes

about baseball.

VanZeeBroeck said she will probably raise the bar for the next reading

period. And she’s not planning to kiss anything else.

“I’m thinking of bringing In-N-Out burgers,” she said.

* Deirdre Newman covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at o7 deirdre.newman@latimes.comf7 .