Giving them every last word

The room burst into applause after the final dictionary of the day was packed into its box. The Coeur d’Alene chapter of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks is in the midst of its annual dictionary drive and partway through the stack of 1,885 dictionaries that will be distributed to Kootenai County third-graders.

Joan Braden, the chair of the dictionary drive, said her favorite part of the whole thing is watching the kids receive their books.

“It’s worth all the work to see the look on their faces when they find out it’s their to keep,” she said. “We want to support our community and help with the education of children and I think that’s the main reason we give the dictionaries to them, as an educational tool.”

The Elks have been donating dictionaries to area third-graders for 19 years. A grant from the National Elks Foundation, plus donations from the local Elks club, helps cover the price tag of the books.

The dictionaries include the U.S. Constitution, all the presidents of the U.S., all the planets, sign language and Braille. They even have the longest work in the English language — the word for a scientific formula that’s 1,909 letters long.

“It’s like a mini encyclopedia,” Braden said.

Project Search, a program through Kootenai Health that teaches job skills to 18 to 21 year-olds with disabilities, helped package the books. Inside each dictionary is a sticker with the name of the student it’s going to and what school they attend.

Tuesday the Elks packaged all 903 of the dictionaries headed for the Coeur d’Alene School District.

The district’s administrative assistant, Glenda Pope, said it will take about a week to get all the books to all their third-graders.

“It’s a cool thing and the kids love it,” she said. “A lot of them have siblings who’ve received the dictionaries and are excited now that it’s their turn.”

Thursday, the Elks will be giving dictionaries to the Lakeland School District and Friday they will give them to the Post Falls School District.