LOVINGTON - Students buying books Saturday for their high school library didn't start out on the same page.

Maddi Harner, Ruthie Wheelock and Ashley Mitchell, for example, had loaded their cart with 20 titles from the "Gossip Girl" series by Cecily Von Ziegesar and the like before Kris Davis and Sean Smith found the graphic novels they knew boys would prefer.

But they eventually got together at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Champaign and purchased 69 books with the $750 they and other members of Lovington High School's book club, Readers Anonymous, raised by reading over the Christmas holiday and first six weeks of 2008.

"It was my first time ever going to an actual bookstore, and I went crazy," said Mitchell, a 17-year-old junior and the top moneymaker with $200. "I love books."

The other students invited to shop by Karen Smith-Cox, the school district's librarian, were the next-highest fundraisers, with Davis, a 16-year-old junior, the only one to have had this experience before. "A lot of new titles have come out in the past year," he said.

This is the second consecutive year members of Readers Anonymous have bought books for the school library, having purchased 73 last year.

"I think we impressed the store manager," Smith-Cox said. "He could see how serious the students were about what books they picked and how they tried to buy not just for themselves but for other students they know who read a lot."

Davis even made a phone call while he was shopping to find out specifically what books a classmate wanted to read.

With 53 members, Readers Anonymous takes in more than half of Lovington High School's enrollment of 104, but Smith-Cox wants to spread enthusiasm for reading further and is letting any student who wants to be the first to read a new book stake their claim with a sticky note while she is getting them ready to check out.

Harner, Wheelock and Smith, all sophomores, said they loved browsing through 30,000 square feet of books at Barnes & Noble.

Said Harner, 16, "It was amazing to walk through and pick up whatever I was interested in and not have to worry about paying for it myself."

Theresa Churchill can be reached at tchurchill@herald-review.com or 421-7978.