Call it an incentive that can really take you places.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, Oak Harbor and Coupeville elementary schools are filled with a joyful buzz because the bikes are here and the give-away is near.

"There's absolutely an overflow of kiddos reading extra books right now to be eligible," said Pam Dunphy, front office assistant at Broad View Elementary.

This school year is the second successful year of the Bikes for Books program, a pet project of the Whidby Island Masonic Lodge based in Coupeville.

"It's excellent delivering them," said Mason Chris Nagel, the project coordinator. "The kids and the schools really enjoy it."Four bikes are distributed annually to all of the elementary schools in Coupeville and Oak Harbor. That's two bikes in the spring and two in the fall to six schools for a total of 24 bikes a year.

Cynthia Woolbright/Whidbey News-Times

After the first set of bikes is given away in a few weeks, there will be a fresh set of bikes - one for a boy and one for a girl - delivered to each school after the winter break, to continue the motivation through the end of the school year. Just in time for summer break and sunny weather, the other set of bikes will be given away at each school.

"Anything we can do to motivate kids to read the better," Nagel said.

Until they are given to the lucky boy and girl who win them, the bikes are displayed in the school libraries. Consider it a daily hint to pick up a book, crack it open and read away to their hearts' content.

Nagel keeps things modest, saying the Masons simply supply the bikes and leave it up to the schools to decide the kids' eligibility requirements - some schools tie it to PTA reading programs, others set marks for the kids to reach before they can be entered for the bikes.

"The last giveaway saw kids reading more than 400 books," Dumphy said of the voracious Broad View readers.

Nagel understand the profound effect simply offering a kid a bike makes. It's the teary phone calls from the winning students' parents that brings it home.

"For some, they wouldn't have an opportunity to get a bike otherwise," he said.

Nagel said the Masons also take an opportunity to incorporate bike safety into the giveaways and offer up gift cards to winning kids if they need to purchase a bike helmet.

"There's no strings attached, which is highly unusual," Nagel said. "All we're asking is for kids to read."

Nagel doesn't see anyone putting the brakes on the Bikes for Books program in the foreseeable future. In fact, the project already has banked funding for the next two years.

"It's something supported 100 percent by the whole Lodge," Nagel said. "The generosity is fantastic with guys digging deep into their pockets to help keep this going. It looks like a Jerry Lewis telethon during meetings when we talk about Bikes for Books."

So even if no other money comes in, the project will continue. "This project is going to keep going," he said. "You have to close schools and the Lodge first for it to go away - and that's not happening."

Additionally the Whidby (yes, that's how they spell it) Masonic Lodge keeps busy in the community beyond bike distribution time. The Masons host community breakfasts at the Lodge building in Coupeville during the summer and fall. Every holiday season they adopt a family or two that they provide with food, gifts and all the other holiday essentials. The Masons also sponsor a road cleanup four times a year at which they get out there and do the dirty work of keeping island roads clean of litter. That's just the beginning. There's also scholarships and other day-today community service.

The Masons' dedication of service doesn't surprise Olympic View Elementary librarian Nicole Bouvion.

"It's been such a great thing for the community to support the kids in this way," she said. "A big thanks goes to the Masons."