There is a photograph we can’t stop looking at.
Five third-graders at Sunnyside Elementary, standing in front of the whiteboard, each one holding up a brand-new book like it’s a trophy. And it kind of is. The book is Flora & Ulysses, Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-winning story about a girl, a squirrel, and the kind of trouble only the two of them could find — and the reason all five of those kids have a copy, and every other third-grader in their classrooms has one too, is the Smyrna-Clayton Rotary Club.
Here’s what the Rotary did, quietly, the way they do most things: they bought books for every third-grade classroom and gave them to the kids. Not loaners from a cart. Not a set the teacher has to count at the end of the year. Theirs. And the Rotarians don’t just drop the boxes off at the front office, either — they come into the classrooms and read a chapter with the students, so the book arrives with a voice attached to it, somebody from their own town sitting in a too-small chair, reading about a squirrel who can type.
If you grew up around here, you know the Rotary’s fingerprints are on half the good that happens in Smyrna and Clayton. The club has been at it since May of 1927 — next spring they turn one hundred years old — thirty-some neighbors who meet for breakfast on Thursdays and spend the rest of the week finding somebody to help. Scholarships for local kids. A car show that raises money for the Scouts and the Little League. And this fall, a classroom full of eight-year-olds holding up books like trophies.
There’s a reason third grade is the year they picked, whether they say it out loud or not. Third grade is the year reading stops being a lesson and starts being a door. A kid who falls for one book — really falls for it, carries it around, reads it under the blanket with a flashlight — is a reader for life. The Rotary just made sure the book in their hands was a good one, and that it was theirs to keep.
We got this story the best way a story can arrive: a reader sent it to us. Lorie Twenge wrote in this week because she thought somebody ought to cover the good will in this town for a change, and then she sent the picture to prove it. She’s right, and the picture’s worth more than our words — five kids, five books, and a town that still shows up for its own.
Brought to you by Team Murphy Media
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