The Cloquet Rotary Club gave a thoughtful and lasting gift to area students this Christmas season.
According to Rotary president Julie Rothmeier, the local club has adopted literacy as its philanthropic project for the year.
And to that end, Rotary members spent the busy days and weeks leading up to Christmas meeting with students and then ordering and distributing books to area school children to encourage them to start reading at a young age and explore the endless possibilities of the written word.
Rothmeier said kindergartners and third-graders in Esko, Carlton and Cloquet public schools, Queen of Peace Elementary and Fond du Lac Little Bear Elementary received books from Cloquet Rotarians.
Kindergartners were each presented personalized story books called, "The First Day of School."
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"We went to the schools ahead of time and asked each child his or her name, the name of their school, city, and the names of three important people in thier lives," she explained.
The information was then sent in to the book publisher and incorporated into each student's book to make each story uniquely their own.
Third-graders were presented with learning dictionaries, complete with photos of all of the Presidents and other useful information.
During the distribution of the dictionaries, Rotary members talked with students about the principles upon which Rotary is based and the importance of literacy in reaching their life's goals.
Some 700 books were distributed in all.
