When an area event involves books, you can bet the Marquette-Alger Reading Council is behind it, and has been for more than a quarter century. Fran Baldisari, a teacher in Gwinn, was the first president. The current president is Cathy Seblonka, Youth Services Librarian at Peter White Public Library. The IRA and the MRA recognize councils for excellence in service to the profession and MARC has achieved Honor Council Status from both associations. MARC was the first council in Michigan to earn Honor IRA Council status.
Membership is open to anyone interested in literacy.
This spring event started in the early 1970s at the Marquette Mall but later moved to the Westwood Mall. Free books are distributed to children who come to listen to books read aloud. Over the years, readers have been sports figures, high school honor students, puppets, or adults representing various occupations. This year MARC members read aloud and teens dressed as book characters like Bridwell's Clifford the Big Red Dog and Holabird's Angelina Ballerina. In 1987 Mary Davis, a Marquette teacher, read about a program for distributing books to children at Christmastime and told her school librarian, Joann Hakala, about it.