Over the past few weeks, third graders across Lawrence County have received a special gift from the Ironton Rotary Club — their very own dictionary.

It’s a project whose goal is to promote literacy and inspire young people early in life to develop solid reading and dictionary skills.

The project, in its second year locally, is providing just under 1,000 soft back dictionaries to third graders from Sugar Creek Christian Academy, Symmes Valley, Deering, Whitwell, St. Lawrence, Burlington, South Point, Chesapeake, Rock Hill and Fairland.

“It is a way to reach out to the entire county, not just a project for one community,” explained Joe Jenkins, a member of the club’s education committee. “It is literally reaching out to the entire community. Rotary being a civic club feels the reading and writing comprehension skills of the students is very important.”

Supplying the books cost in excess of $1,200 and Rotarians were helped by Dow Chemical of Hanging Rock, National City Bank of Ironton, The Ironton Tribune, Briggs-Lawrence Public Library, Creative Financial Solutions and longtime Rotarian and retired businessman, Don Edwards.

For the next month Rotarians will continue to hand-deliver the books to each student.

“It gives something the kids can claim as their own. When they get books at that age, they belong to the schools,” said Darwin Haynes, Rotary president. “This belongs to the students themselves. It gives them something they can use to further their education. Rotary is there to help people.”