Dolly Parton’s Imagination

Library

“Dream more, Learn more,

Care more, Be more”

The Story of Dolly’s Imagination Library

In 1996, Dolly Parton launched an exciting effort to benefit the children of her home county, Sevier County, in eastern 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.

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, Watty Piper’s classic The Little Engine That Could (Platt & Munk; 1961), 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 Nancy Carlson’s Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come (Viking, 1999)

The Story of Dolly’s Imagination Library Continued

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 though 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 200 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.

How it WorksA 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.

Prevalent Themes & Focus of Dolly Parton’s Imagination

Library• Inspiration & Imagination• Other Fundamental Themes of Regard: Love of reading and learning; regard for diversity of people, their

roles, culture, and environment; promotion of self-esteem and confidence, appreciation of art and aesthetics. Each series of books should contain certain characteristics specific to their age appropriateness including:

• YEAR ONE: Vision - bright, big, colorfulTouch - board pagesRhyme and rhythmSimple - easy to useMinimal text - point and sayPlayful soundNurture - attachment- lullaby themes

• YEAR TWO: Continue concepts from year one and build upon themRepetition and predictability - generate languageMotor skills“Self-help” activities - things children can do, things familiar in their daily lifeUse of real photo illustrationBody awarenessNursery rhymesColors, letters, numbers

Prevalent Themes & Focus of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Continued• YEAR THREE: Wordless books - build your own story (reader and child)

Values and characterIssues - fear, conflict, love, safetyColors, letters, numbersNursery rhymes

• YEAR FOUR: More complex stories - hero, complication, resolutionDiversity of others - faces, environment - OK to be differentPlay, humor, funNursery rhymes and poetry School preparation and

readiness

• YEAR FIVE: Use rebus (pictures used for words)Science - non-fictionFolk talesThank you, appreciationRhymes and poetry

Regional DirectorPam Hunsaker

The Dollywood Foudation4009 Citation Drive

Columbia, MO 65202Phone: 573-817-0117

Fax: 572-874-1542www.imaginationlibrary.com

“I never, ever dreamed this little program would become so huge. And as it has grown, so has my vision for it. I think the tipping point came when Gov. [Phil] Bredesen of Tennessee asked me if we could work together to bring this to every child in the state. That’s when I thought this could be really big.”

Tennessee Imagination Library

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

Why Imagination Library?

• The only behavior measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home. An analysis of a national data set of nearly 100,000 United States school children found that access to printed materials--and not poverty--is the "critical variable affecting reading acquisition." Jeff McQuillan, The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions, 1998. Children who have not already developed some basic literacy practices when they enter school are three to four times more likely to drop out in later years. National Adult Literacy Survey, 1993

• 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. National Commission on Reading, 1985

• Most of the reading problems faced by today's adolescents and adults are the result of problems that might have been avoided or resolved in their early childhood years (National Research Council, 2000. "Reading is typically acquired relatively predictably by children who… have had experiences in early childhood that fostered motivation and provided exposure to literacy in use. National Research Council, 2000

• 60% of the kindergartners in neighborhoods where children did poorly in school did not own a single book. The Patterns of Book Ownership and Reading, D. Feitelson and Z. Goldstein, 1986

Why Imagination Library?• The most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children is to increase

their access to print. Communities ranking high in achievement tests have several factors in common: an abundance of books in public libraries, easy access to books in the community at large and a large number of textbooks per student. Newman, Sanford, et all. "American's Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy"; Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2000.

• The gap between children from low and high-income families on reading comprehension scores is over 40 points. Children from low-income families, on average, score 27 points below the mean reading level score for all students. Students from wealthy families score 15 points above the average. The Condition of Education, NationalCenter for Education Statistics, 1993.

• Communication and language is the area in which children need the greatest help – 55% of children had no proficiency or only beginning levels of proficiency in skills related to recognizing rhyming words; 35% in recognizing all letters of the alphabet; 33% in engaging with books; and 25% in having expressive abilities. Ready For School? A Report on Skill Levels of San MateoCountyKindergartners. Peninsula Partnership for Children, Youth and Families. Executive Summary, 2004.

• U.S. Department of Education states, if you read to your child from infancy until age five for:• 30 Minutes Daily=You will have read to your child for 900 hours!• 30 Minutes Weekly=You will have read to your child for 130 hours!• Less than 30 Minutes Weekly=You will have read your child for 60 hours!