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Dictionary Lady spreads the word across U.S.

© Sandra Linville

The “Dictionary Lady” put words in the hands of every third grader in South Carolina in 2001. What began as a one-woman project to deliver dictionaries to third graders attending school in three counties around Charleston, South Carolina five years ago is now reaching students in at least 16 more states.

A request for school dictionaries in her local newspaper prompted Mary French to action, resulting in more than 300,000 dictionaries to be donated to date to third-grade students through her program. Her call to action continues to win converts and last year, the Dictionary Project raised the funds to buy a dictionary for every South Carolinian third grader.

According to the Dictionary Project’s web site, volunteers have started projects in California, Hawaii, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, Delaware, Maryland, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Vermont and Pennsylvania.

French has targeted third graders since it is a time for students to begin independent work. In a program introduction at the web site, it is stated: “Students benefit from an increased self-reliance and resourcefulness inspired by the maxim ‘look it up.’…The program is an opportunity for children to expand their vocabulary and for many to actually own a dictionary. A strong vocabulary is an essential tool for gaining knowledge. The limits of an individual’s language are the limits of his world.”

If you are interested in beginning this project in your school district or state, take a look at the Dictionary Project Start-Up Kit. It gives you the cost of the dictionaries – versions for either $1.45 or $.95 each and a sample letter to send to school district superintendents to introduce the project as well as ask for approval. French has also listed a suggested plan of action from initial idea to putting the dictionaries into the students’ hands to thank you notes and media coverage.

By giving the gift of words to all these students, Mary French most certainly must be named in the “Word Hall of Fame” which should exist if it doesn’t. As South Carolina Post and Courier reporter Catherine Lawrence quipped,French is an “academic Santa Claus.”

As each third grader opens his or her dictionary for the first time and discovers the power and magic of the language, it is our only hope that the pages become dog-eared as the years pass. And most likely, even as many of those students buy their own, more complete, dictionaries, it is also most likely that they hang on to that very first dictionary, given to them by someone who wasn’t daunted by the sheer enormity of her undertaking. But understood that by giving out words in this manner she was building a strong foundation for the students as well as our future.