Local affiliates of the Imagination Library have three responsibilities: to pay for the cost of the books, to register the children in their area, and to manage the local database. To make this possible, the cost of the books and mailing (approximately $2.00 per month or $25.00 annually) is covered by local funding. They will be matching up to $35,000! This program is free to families with young children in our community. Help us get books in the hands of more young readers! Make a donation today to have it matched by a generous gift from local business and community leader Nichols. Sponsor one of over 6,000 children in Muskegon & Oceana Counties. Give the love of reading to a child in your community. Imagine every child having their own library of 60 books by the time they go to kindergarten! View Survey Results From Previous Year! The single most significant factor influencing a child’s early educational success is an introduction to books and being read to at home prior to beginning school. Each month, every registered child receives a free, high-quality, age-appropriate book through the mail, continuing until the child turns five years old. How it works: ALL children under the age of five residing in Muskegon, Newaygo, or Oceana Counties are eligible to participate. It is a FREE GIFT, made possible by generous donations to United Way of the Lakeshore. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library makes reading exciting and fun for your children! Each month a new, carefully selected book will be mailed in your child’s name directly to your home, with no cost or obligation to your family. This initiative is now a national and global program managed by the Dollywood Foundation and brought to our local community by United Way of the Lakeshore. She wanted children to be excited about books and feel the magic that books can create, and to ensure that every child would have access to quality books, regardless of their family’s income. Her dream was to foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month. In 1995, Dolly Parton launched an exciting initiative to benefit the children of her home county in East Tennessee. The books – all Penguin Random House titles – are chosen by a panel of early childhood literacy experts.What is the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Program (DPIL)? The Imagination Library’s littlest participants’ love of books is fostered with colorful illustrations and simple texts, often rhymes having to do with animals or bedtime.īy the time a reader hits their final year of the program at age 5, the focus will have shifted to school readiness, with subjects including science, folktales, and poetry. Parents and guardians are encouraged to enroll them at birth. Participation can start well before a child is old enough to attempt their ABCs. Originally limited to children residing in Sevier County, Tennessee, the program has expanded to serve over 2,000,000 kids in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and the Republic of Ireland. Together with the community partners who secure funding for postage and non-administrative costs, the Book Lady has given away some 186,680,000 books since the project launched in 1995. Parton is convinced that her father, whose pride in her musical accomplishments was so great he drove over with a bucket of soapy water to clean the bronze statue her hometown erected in her honor, was prouder still of a nickname bestowed on her by the Imagination Library’s child beneficiaries – the Book Lady. I told him, “Daddy, there are probably millions of people in this world who don’t know how to read and write, who didn’t get the opportunity. Because of the weather and because of conditions, a lot of kids couldn’t go to school. Kids had to go to work in the fields to help feed the family. Parton explains how there was a time when schooling was never considered a given for children in the mountains of East Tennessee, particularly for those like her father, who came from a family of 15:
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