Reading 'round the globe

St. Joseph Elementary School second grade students, Macey Mead, left, and Henry Saint make "schuletute", German school gift bags, during a world's fair of literacy, near the end of March is Reading Month, at the school on Monday morning. / John Grap/The Enquirer
Over the weekend, Battle Creek's Arild Rorhus worked up a batch of caramel cake from his native Norway — his mother's recipe — to share with the students at St. Joseph Catholic Elementary today.
Rorhus' Norwegian delights, along with pickles from Poland, dried mango and limeade from the Philippines, Burmese salad from Myanmar, and a host of other treats, were part of St. Joe's World Fair celebration in honor of March is Reading Month. There also were various crafts from the different countries displayed and a sampling of books.
Jeanine Winkler, the school's administrative assistant, said students have collected stamps in their "passports" throughout the month as they learned about different countries and completed reading goals. The school also invited volunteers in to teach kids about different cultures and read to them.
"This is the culmination of all that," Winkler said this morning. "We just wanted to show them all the good that God's created in the world."
"It's nice," said Rorhus, 44, who said he's lived in the U.S. 20 years, half of that in the Cereal City. He has two fourth-graders and a sixth-grader at the school.
"It's a chance to show off some of the stuff," he said. "And kids get a feel of what else is out there, different flavors of the world."
Among the other stops: Australia, Bolivia, Mexico, Egypt, Denmark, China, Ireland, Columbia, Germany and Guatemala.
Among the samplers was 8-year-old second-grader Nathan Pawlowicz, who said he'd learned lots of new stuff throughout the year and was enjoying the fair.