Christopher Lake Public School is about to get buried in books.

The local school was one of seven from across Saskatchewan chosen to take part in this year’s Indigo Love of Reading Foundation adopt-a-school program.

Currently in its 10th year, the program helps school libraries across Canada expand and update their selection of books.

Jody Harkness, a student support teacher at Christopher Lake Public School, said it’s exciting to be among those lucky schools.

“We had just redone our library about two years ago, so we have this nice, beautiful space, but we’re lacking in books,” Harkness explained. “The books that we have are quite old. We’ve been looking at ways in order to get more … so this was exciting for us.”

From Sept. 15 to Oct. 7, the school will be fundraising donations for their new books, with the Love of Reading Foundation matching up $1,200.

Christopher Lake Public School students have been making bookmarks to help spur donations, and they received another boost from the local Lions Club donated $500.

“The Lions are always so community oriented,” Harkness said. “We thought, ‘well, what the heck?’ We gave them a little presentation and they phoned us the next day.”

There’s also an online portion, where residents can share and “heart” stories on Christopher Lake’s Love of Reading Foundation page, which sparks a book donation to the school.

The goal is to raise at least one book for each of the 165 students. Teachers from Christopher Lake will make the trip to Saskatoon on Oct. 4 to help pick out the new books.

Harkness said smart phones and other technological devices make it difficult for teachers to keep their students engaged. Having a strong library, she explained, is a vital part of doing that.

“It’s really hard for us as teachers, when kids have technology readily available in the palm of their hands, to compete with that, so it’s so important for us to have books that are up to date and are of interest to the kids.”

For more information on the Christopher Lake Public School campaign, or to donate online, visit adoptaschool.indigo.ca/eng/schools/2125.

The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation started operations in 2004 as a means to raise awareness about literacy in Canadian schools. Since then, it has raised more than $28-million for elementary schools across the country.

A total of 190 schools were selected for this year’s adopt-a-school program.