If you give a kid a dictionary, she'll want to look something up.

That's the hope, anyway, among members of north-metro Rotary clubs who have sponsored a dictionary giveaway to nearly 3,000 Anoka-Hennepin third-graders.

The program, in its second year, is a collaboration of the Anoka-Hennepin Foundation, Rotary District 5960 and the Rotary chapters in Anoka, Blaine-Ham Lake, Coon Rapids and Ramsey, along with the National Dictionary Project. The organization, based in Charleston, S.C., provides the books to service organizations for $1.70 apiece.

At Mississippi Elementary School in Coon Rapids last week, project manager Phil Knutson, along with Rotarians Scot and Cyndi Brenner, handed a soft-cover book to each student in Mary Nystedt's class.

Knutson instructed them to pull out their favorite pen, pencil, marker or crayon to mark their names in their books.

"We're here to give you your very own dictionary to keep forever," Knutson said as the boys and girls marked their names in block letters or their cautious, newly learned cursive. "You don't have to give it back."

"I'm gonna use my lucky pencil," commented Avionce Nelson.

Asked how the dictionaries are useful, students noted: looking up definitions, spelling, pronunciation. From a back table, Blain Clark raised his hand.

"There something else dictionaries do," he said. "They make you more smarter."

Over the next 20 minutes, the kids paged through their books, sharing cool words and factoids.

"Who knows the longest word?" Knutson asked.

"I know it," called August Skager.

"What is it?" Knutson asked.

"I can't say it," August replied.

It turns out August was thinking of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," of Mary Poppins fame, but these dictionaries actually list methiony ... something, a 1,909-letter, half-page monstrosity that's the moniker for a type of protein. The room immediately filled with the sing-song sound of kids stringing together the list of syllables that make up the word.

For the next several minutes, the students buzzed over their new books, exploring new words, as well as the pages of almanac materials at the back.

Nystedt appreciated her students' enthusiasm.

"This is a great book of knowing stuff," she said. "Third grade is such a time of enchantment and appreciation. They're beginning to learn bigger words, and so they're ready for a dictionary."

She pointed Jessica Mauer and Rylee Mickle from the measurement conversions in their dictionaries to the ones they had drawn on the board.

Jessica turned to her teacher.

"We can learn a lot from these," she observed.

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409