By JOYANNA LOVE/ Senior Staff Writer

Clanton Elementary School reading specialist Monique Harton wanted each student in kindergarten through second grade to have a book of their very own.

In order to reach her goal, she applied for a Partners Enhancing Education in Chilton County grant and started a fundraising page of DonorsChoose.org.

Both plans were successful.

Harton was presented a check for $923 from the Chilton Education Foundation on Feb. 28.

“I’m just overjoyed,” Harton said. “I never thought that I would receive this much funding. I never thought the project would be completely funded, so I am very thankful.”

The timing was perfect as it was the final day of a sale Scholastic was having.

With these funds and those raised through DonorsChoose.org, every student in the school in kindergarten and up will receive a book, pencil and reading-themed sticker. That’s about 700 students.

The books will be for the students to take home and keep.

Most of the books will be fiction.

“I just kind of took a poll of the kind of books that the children are interested in, then I looked at the types of books they were checking out of the library,” Harton said.