Our “Gift Book a Month” program is a big hit. The smiles and the excitement is contagious. Thanks to those Rotarians who make sure we were good to go and to Elaine Ackroyd-Kelly, Jeanne Hamele, and Marilyn Passer for organizing the books for student selection and for the procurement of the Foundation Grant that makes this possible! Many Rotarians give their time each month to come in and help kids choose. Each month students come down to pick a book to add to their home library. This has been a HLRC passion project in the works for years, starting off with class books, and now, we reach every single home of our UPK-5th grade families. 

For years, Rotarian Jeanne Hamele and Marilyn Matteson worked to create and facilitate a thriving reading program at Honeoye Elementary School with former HCS librarian, Holly Mullin. This project provided incentives to read to all third through fifth grade students. As the years continued, current librarian and Rotarian, Janelle Deal joined the program. With continued enthusiasms, recognition continued for those challenging themselves as readers. Some of the awards were classroom snacks, pizza parties, certificates, gift cards, plaques, trophies... as well as the 100+ Club. Although this program was sunsetted to focus on our Monthly Book Giving, we can reflect deeply on the avid life-long readers this program left in it's wake! 

Before becoming a monthly book giving to individual students, HLRC started with primary classroom book gifts. Part of this initiative was to encourage and foster literacy growth with primary students before they head into third through fifth grade with the Rotary Reading Rally challenge. That being the case, it started with Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade classrooms choosing one title to enjoy as a class. When finished using it in the classroom, they could add it to their home library. That spark lead to big thoughts around the Rotary Book Giving Program that we have continued to grow over the last few years.