Thirty students at Pearl River Central Middle School were surprised last week when they received books through a contest.

The middle school librarian Sheri Maloy entered a contest through a website Share My Lessons. As a winner, Maloy said she was able to choose different books she “thought would benefit the children” for 30 randomly selected middle school students.

“If you have an opportunity to get books for kids, you take advantage of it when it comes along,” Maloy said about entering the contest.

Pearl River County School District Superintendent Alan Lumpkin said for a school to be eligible for the drawing, 75 percent of the students had to be low income.

“I’ve never seen kids so excited over books,” Maloy said.

Sixteen schools across the nation were chosen as winners, but PRC middle school was the only school in Mississippi, Lumpkin said.

He said each student that was randomly chosen received about five or six books for them to take home.

“We’re just very fortunate to have a librarian like Mrs. Maloy to take initiative to try and win these things for our kids,” Lumpkin said.

Share My Lesson is a free resource website for teachers that partnered with First Book, a non-profit organization that helps children in need to get access to books, to provide books to the winners.

“The kids were very excited,” Lumpkin said. “It was like Christmas day.”

Some of the books Maloy chose were “Third Wheel” from the popular book series “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “The Art of Disney” animation design book, a dictionary and a thesaurus.