Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (Oct 21/02) - Rufus the Reading Rascal was created as a drawing but has evolved into a stuffed mascot.

Michelle Sabean, literacy project co-ordinator with the SSDEC, with Rufus the Reading Rascal./NNSL photo

And students in the South Slave have welcomed him with open arms.

Michelle Sabean, the co-ordinator for the Literacy Project of the South Slave Divisional Education Council, says the positive reaction is very exciting and encouraging.

Rufus is the literacy project's official mascot.

Recently, the SSDEC distributed the stuffed versions of Rufus to schools in the South Slave.

"By all accounts, the students are in love with him," says Sabean.

She notes that, at Paul William Kaeser high school in Fort Smith, Rufus has even been "high schoolized" with sun glasses and a denim jacket.

Rufus was created two years ago in a drawing by Larissa Korol, now a Grade 6 student at Joseph Burr Tyrrell elementary school in Fort Smith.

Korol says she is happy with the stuffed version of Rufus.

"It looks like him," she says.

And she is happy that other students also like Rufus, which she drew as a cat.

Rufus is just one part of the SSDEC's three-year literacy initiative launched in 2001.