Dictionary Project sparks love of exploration in third-graders near and far

THE OLYMPIAN | • Published October 04, 2009

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My work desk is cluttered with notebooks, phone books, papers, mail and assorted studies and reference books, some of which haven't been opened in years.

But there’s one book I use every day that never has a chance of gathering dust: my dictionary.

I’d be lost without it in my never-ending quest to remember how to spell “accommodate” and “occasional,” or to double-check an adjective before using it in a story, just to make sure it means what I think it does – for instance, “assorted.”

I use the official dictionary of The Associated Press, which is Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. It was published in 2000, and I know it’s a bit outdated, but it still serves me well.

Sure, spell check is a helpful function on my computer and dictionary.com is a useful tool, but my 1,716-page dictionary still rules as the final arbiter in my writing world.

That said, you probably can guess that I’m a big fan of the Dictionary Project, a nonprofit program designed to get dictionaries into the hands of third-grade students nationwide.

From its modest beginning in 1992, when Annie Plummer distributed 50 dictionaries to students attending a school close to her Savannah, Ga., home, the Dictionary Project has grown to 3.23 million dictionaries distributed in 2007 by individuals and civic groups nationwide, including here in South Sound.

In the next few weeks, the Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater Lions clubs and the McLane Grange will be in third-grade classrooms in North Thurston Public Schools and the Olympia and Tumwater school districts, delivering dictionaries to all third-grade students.

“Kids love it,” Olympia School District spokesman Peter Rex said. “For some, it’s the first book they’ve ever owned.”

Lacey Sunrise Lions Club member Jim LaBelle said his club joined the Dictionary Project six years ago. With help from two other Lacey-based Lions clubs, 1,150 third-graders in 13 North Thurston elementary schools will receive a dictionary in about two weeks, hand-delivered in the classrooms by Lions Club members.

The paperback dictionaries cost the service clubs about $1.70 each. Donations, as well as money raised at club fundraisers, help pay for the books.

LaBelle never tires of the time he spends in the classroom, distributing the dictionaries. He said the smiles and looks in the eyes of the students are priceless.

You may ask: Why third-graders?

By third grade, most students have learned to read and are reading to learn, which makes a dictionary a handy tool, noted Cherie Pallitto, a third-grade teacher at Meadows Elementary School near Lacey.

“The Dictionary Project has a huge impact on students,” Pallitto said. “In a lot of households, it kind of becomes the family dictionary.”

She said the students particularly love the back pages in the dictionary – you know, the pages chock-full of information about geologic time (the Pleistocene Age began 1.6 million years ago), United States presidents (Virginia was the birthplace of four of the first five presidents) and planets of the solar system (Mars is, on average, 141.5 million miles from the sun).

The idea behind the Dictionary Project is a simple one: When a child is encouraged to use a dictionary, he or she becomes more effective at using the English language. A dictionary goes hand in hand with avid reading, good writing, creative thinking and resourceful learning.

Some may think a dictionary is superfluous in this age of computers. But an estimated 20 percent of the third-graders in this country don’t have access to a computer at home, especially minority and low-income children.

Besides, a dictionary is a portable book that encourages exploration and discovery.

Ever stopped to think how hard it would be to compile every word in the English language into one book? If the question interests you, I highly recommend you read “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester.

The professor is Scottish lexicographer and philologist James Murray. For the record, a lexicographer is someone who writes a dictionary, and a philologist is a person who studies the meaning of words.

Commissioned by delegates of the Oxford University Press, Murray spent from 1879 until his death in 1915 putting together the Oxford English Dictionary, a project that wasn’t completed until 1928.

Murray relied on contributors to help him with his work, including U.S. surgeon William Chester Minor, who moved to England after the Civil War, descended into a delusional world of mental illness, killed a man and ended up incarcerated in an English asylum for the criminally insane.

While locked up, Minor become one of Murray’s most prolific and accomplished contributors to the dictionary project.

The two men’s obsession with words and their relationship make for a compelling read, especially for those of us who still use dictionaries to help decipher the English language and unlock literary worlds.

John Dodge: 360-754-5444

jdodge@theolympian.com