Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

Kyla reading books!



Through Alaska's Kids, the moms group that I am part of, I heard about this great program where your child can receive a book each month until they turn five for free. I signed Kyla up and we just recently received her first book, The Little Engine that Could. Based on when I signed Kyla up, she will receive 43 books for free through this program. It is a Foundation created and supported by Dolly Parton to keep children interested in reading.

Through my education background and work in Early Childhood I think reading is extremely important for our children and have worked in several programs to promote reading in early childhood and help get children up to grade level in literacy. I would like to recommend each of my friends and family with young children to check out the website and information below to see if this program is offered in your area so that your child can receive these books too! Kyla has a TON of books and we spend time reading them everyday, but it will be fun for her to continue to increase her collection of books through this program.

From Dolly Partons Imagination Library Website: ImaginationLibrary.com

In 1996, Dolly Parton launched an exciting new effort to benefit the children of her home county in east Tennessee. Dolly wanted to foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families. She wanted children to be excited about books and to feel the magic that books can create. Moreover, she could insure that every child would have books, regardless of their family’s income.

So she decided to mail a brand new, age appropriate book each month to every child under 5 in Sevier County. With the arrival of every child’s first book, the classic The Little Engine That Could ™, every child could now experience the joy of finding their very own book in their mail box. These moments continue each month until the child turns 5—and in their very last month in the program they receive Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come.

Needless to say the experience has been a smashing success. So much so that many other communities clamored to provide the Imagination Library to their children. Dolly thought long and hard about it and decided her Foundation should develop a way for other communities to participate. The Foundation asked a blue ribbon panel of experts to select just the right books and secured Penguin Group USA to be the exclusive publisher for the Imagination Library. Moreover a database was built to keep track of the information.

Consequently, in March of 2000 she stood at the podium of The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and revealed the plan for other communities to provide the Imagination Library to their children. And as only Dolly can say it, she wanted to “put her money where her mouth is – and with such a big mouth that’s a pretty large sum of money” and provide the books herself to the children of Branson, Missouri and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – communities where her businesses now operate. If other leaders in their communities were willing to do the same, well something big might just happen.

You know what? It did!!

David Dotson, Executive Director of The Dollywood Foundation, Dolly Parton, Lady Jackson, President of the Governor’s Books from Birth Foundation, and Phil Bredesen, Governor, State of Tennessee.

Here’s how it works:

A community must make the program accessible to all preschool children in their area. The community pays for the books and mailing, promotes the program, registers the children, and enters the information into the database.

From there The Dollywood Foundation takes over and manages the system to deliver the books to the home. You can find out more of the operational details on other pages in this website – so what are you waiting for! Hundreds of communities are providing books to hundreds of thousands of children.