Rotary continues book tradition

An important mission of Rotary International is to promote literacy. In April the Cloquet Rotary Club distributed 337 dictionary/reference books to third-graders from Churchill, Washington, Winterquist elementary schools in Cloquet, South Terrace in Carlton, and the school in Wrenshall. In addition, 324 kindergarten students from the same schools each received a personal storybook with the characters and the settings selected by each student and woven into a story. The kindergarteners are proudly able to read these stories aloud from a real book with themselves and their own friends and family as characters.

“It is gratifying to hear from so many students, years after receiving their books, that they have kept them and still treasure them,” the Rotary said in a statement.

When the third-graders were presented with their dictionaries they were asked how many remember their kindergarten storybooks. Nearly every hand went up.

The Rotary Club of Cloquet Literacy Project, led by Travis Hansen this year, has sponsored and implemented the project for several years. In the past, Rotarians personally presented the dictionaries and storybooks to each student. Because of continued Covid precautions, they were not able to do so this year and the books were distributed by their teachers.