Denali Elementary School students celebrated reading in the Iditaread race Thursday afternoon.

Thursday's celebration included awards and singing their re-written version of Hobo Jim's Iditarod trail song, which fit their journey.

Parents, teachers and students read a book a mile for every mile in the Iditarod and actually passed their goal of 1,049 books, reading 1,227 books before Lance Mackey crossed the finish line in Nome.

The kids said they had a lot of fun and learned many new things, including to not judge a book by its cover.

Katherine Moody said, “I learned that reading is really, really fun and it's one of the best things in the world.”

Ariel Bell said, “I learned that sometimes you can't judge a book by its cover and that you can't just look at the pictures and think that it's not going to be a good book.”

Next year they plan to add on extra versions to their Iditaread trail song and surpass their mile goal to Nome again.