He wears size-15 shoes, stands 6 feet 10 1/2, grew up in a small town in Illinois and will marry his childhood sweetheart in the summer.

The Los Angeles Lakers pay him "lots and lots" of money, forward Brian Cook told a group of O'ahu sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders yesterday at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. But, he said, he doesn't live in a mansion.

"I live in an apartment," he said. "But it is a pretty big apartment."

Cook, 24, spoke to two classrooms of children who won the 2005 Lakers' Read to Achieve Challenge.

In the contest, sponsored by The Honolulu Advertiser's Newspapers in Education program, the children tracked each minute spent reading during a one-week period in September.

Chelsea Harry's Ho'ala School seventh- and eighth-graders from Wahiawa took first place with an average of 2,175 minutes — about 36 1/2 hours — per student.

Christine Mabuni's sixth-graders from Salt Lake Elementary School came in second with an average of 1,985 minutes per student.

The students were motivated by the prize: the opportunity to spend time with a professional basketball player, their teachers said.

"Meeting a Laker was a big, big deal for them," Harry said.

"They became very competitive," Mabuni said.

The kids read science fiction, mysteries and thrillers, teen dramas, newspapers, magazines and the dictionary.

"Only the A's," said Roger Sibayan, of Salt Lake, who said he stayed up until the early morning hours reading the Harry Potter books with his 6-month-old brother on his lap.

Krystal Hill, of Ho'ala School, said she read "A Child Called It," among other novels, and particularly enjoyed the victory celebration at school.

"It was fun; it rocked," the seventh-grader said. "We had this huge, screaming party — we pretty much screamed and ate cookies and stuff."

Nicole Chatigny, Ho'ala School's eighth-grade class president, said she averaged six to eight hours each night, consuming Harry Potter and Dan Brown novels.

Jessica Lum, a Salt Lake 6th-grader, read mysteries and joke books. "Why did the chicken cross the playground?" she asked, when pressed for a joke. "To get to the other slide."

Cook read a book to the children, then answered their questions, many of which were personal. He enjoys fishing when not playing basketball, he said, and he likes playing computer games online.

The son of two basketball players, he was 6 feet 4 in the eighth grade, and sprouted to 6 feet 8 in the ninth grade.

"I was all clumsy when I hit that growth spurt," he said.

Cook, who signed basketballs, T-shirts and caps and posed for pictures at the end of the event, said he enjoys being around children and hopes to work with them when his basketball career is over.

He said he was impressed by time the children put into their reading. "Some of them read more than five hours a night," he said. "That is a pretty big part of your life."

Reach Karen Blakeman at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.