Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is now available in Garvin County, offering free books to all children under the age of 5, regardless of family income.
About 215 children have been registered so far to receive a free book each month through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program in partnership with a local affiliate, the Garvin County Imagination Library.
DollyParton’sImagination Library was launched in 1995 by The Dollywood Foundation, providing free books to children in Parton’s home area of Sevier County, Tennessee, with the goal of inspiring a love of books and reading. Today, the program gifts more than 3 million free books each month to children around the world. The books are provided through funding shared by Dolly Parton and local community partners.
In Garvin County, that partnership includes a group of educators, librarians and community members from around the county who have worked together to bring the program to fruition for local children.
The seed for the Garvin County Imagination Library was planted last fall, when a community member brought the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program to the attention of Elmore City-Pernell Superintendent Sheila Riddle. Riddle said she began working with others in her school district to see what it would take to bring the program to the Elmore City area.
“As we worked on that, we realized we could touch a lot more children if we expanded it to a county library program,” Riddle said.
So, she reached out to other school districts across the county and they began meeting regularly to discuss how to get the program up and running. The group also coordinated with Laura Sikes, director of the Oklahoma Imagination Library, through the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
“We kind of developed a game plan from there about how we could implement it in our communities,” Riddle said.
The Dolly Parton Foundation covers overhead costs for the program and negotiates wholesale pricing for the books, while local community partners fundraise to cover the cost of mailing and decided-upon wholesale book prices.
Alaina Chronister, librarian at Pauls Valley’s Elementary and Intermediate schools, said the Garvin County group is partnering with the Oklahoma State Department of Education, who through a grant from the Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness, is reimbursing half of the local cost of the program for this year.
But the group still needed to raise enough money to cover costs for the first year of the program, which they estimated to be about $5,000, before Sikes could recommend their affiliate for the program.
Riddle said they began to reach out to local banks and businesses in the county to see who could help with fundraising.
“We have had an extremely wonderful response not just from local banks in the county but also from individual businesses, as well,” Riddle said. “They’ve been extremely supportive of getting literacy in the hands of our kids.”
The group has already raised $10,000 toward the project, meeting the goal they had actually set for the second year of the program.
With an estimated 1,100 children in the area currently eligible for the program, fundraising will be an ongoing project to ensure the program remains viable.
Teresia Jors, library media specialist for Stratford’s Chandler-Watts Memorial Library, has also been instrumental in getting the program up and running, Riddle said.
Chronister said by working together, the communities involved have been able to be more productive.
“There is no way that I could get this done for my area by myself, but as a group, we have become stronger and more productive. We each have our strengths, and we use them for the good of the entire area,” Chronister said.
The program is available to all children from birth to age 5. Children must be registered by a parent or guardian in order to receive the books, and there is no charge to families to register or receive the books. Once registered, age-appropriate books are mailed directly to the child’s home each month. Books should begin to arrive about eight to 10 weeks after registration forms are received. The first book distributed is always the children’s classic “The Little Engine That Could.”
Children enrolled from birth receive 60 books by the time they graduate from the Imagination Library program.
One of the benefits of the program is to get books in the hands of children at an early age, ultimately promoting stronger literacy skills later in life.
“If we can get that exposure early, it will really be a positive impact on our school districts,” Riddle said.
“I think we will see more academic success with this program in our schools,” Chronister added. “If students can come to school for the first time and be able to identify letters and know how books bring magical stories to life, then I think we will have succeeded.”
For more information, or to register your child, please visit ImaginationLibrary. com.
