North Little Rock High School students are getting lots of thumbs up on You Tube (nearly 6,000 at this writing) for their music video, “I Like Big Books,” which they released Jan. 7 as part of a literacy project.

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Student Eliysheba Evans-Williams filmed, directed and edited and students Alex Watkins, Alex Gosser and Evan Peters star in the take-off on Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “I Like Big Butts” (lyrics by reading teachers Valerie StaveyMacy Purtle and Valerie Mclean), which along with the $700,000 federal grant the school received to buy Nooks for its students will promote reading at all grade levels in the district.

Teacher Tammy Deatherage said tudents will be on KATV in the morning tomorrow morning and have been invited by the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media to speak at a conference in April. “Our biggest dream is to be on Ellen [as in the “Ellen DeGeneres Show”] and have the opportunity to promote literacy,” Deatherage said.

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The video gets off to a rocky start (sound and video not quite synced) but stay with it; kudos to the kids and their mentors at NLRHS. Some lyrics:

I like big books and I can not lie
You other brothers can’t deny
That when a girl walks in with a great big book
And you just can’t help but look
Cuz you notice that book was tough
Deep in the bag she’s needing
I’m hooked and I can’t stop reading
Oh, baby I wanna sit with ya
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to slow me
But that book you got
So cool so show me
Pages of smooth lines
You say you wanna get in my mind
Well teach me teach me cuz those books you got can reach me.

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