North Elementary 2-4

North Elementary fourth-graders were presented a free hard-covered copy of Shel Silverstein’s book “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” on Wednesday (May 20) as part of the Greater Mankato Area United Way’s book project which covers a four-county area in south central Minnesota.

Every spring for the past decade, the Olseth Family Foundation and Greater Mankato Area United Way have provided approximately 1,700 brand-new, hard copies of this book to fourth-graders throughout Nicollet, Le Sueur, Blue Earth, and Waseca counties. To commemorate the 10th year of distributing the free books, students were also given a special bookmark with a poem written by Jon Olseth.

North fourth graders gathered in a classroom next to the library to meet with Rachel McGregor and Jennine Wills, volunteers with Greater Mankato Area United Way. The two United Way reps offered some insight into the Olseth Family Foundation’s donation and Silverstein’s book, before distributing more than 150 copies to the North students.

After each fourth-grader had a copy of the book, a handful of fourth-graders took turns reading their favorite poems from “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

Above and below are some photo highlights from the book donation event at North! (Classes pictured below in the first two photos are from Mr. Lewis, Mrs. Friedrich & Mr. Hassing's classrooms along with Mrs. Hinton, Mrs. Nixon, and Ms. Zitur's classrooms.)