Dolly Parton's Imagination Library (imaginationlibrary.com)
With today's news, I thought I'd share this great program:
“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.
The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
108 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadThe world needs more Dolly Partons, that is for sure. But lucky for us, the world has many billions of people who are willing and able to participate in the sort of mutual aid that Dolly championed.
I think the baby books are board books, but after that they are floppy picture books.
That is just fine, though it’s just not the same as holding a hardcover.
Our kids don’t care about that, though. It’s more about the time and talking about the pictures and how well we ham it up.
And, of course, there was the Oz books.
It is interesting to me that a good story, poorly written, can be souch harder to get though than a well written boring story that just flows well.
Dolly Parton has died
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49438052
—Sent from Dollywood
I like the sibling comment "We should be more ambitious with the people we build." -- there are so many great things people with some means can be doing!
Interestingly, the coordinating body that selects books, facilitates distribution, and negotiates wholesale pricing is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, but per-book funding is actually entirely through local charities and so on. This means that where charities are unable to act as partners, children will not receive books, but it also means that the program can operate by growing and shrinking as local support (including from state and local government grants) comes online and goes offline while keeping the overhead for local partners low.
Dolly Parton came up with the initial local structure for her region in Tennessee and David Dotson of Dollywood scaled the operation using this decentralized model. Very impressive structure that makes this sustainable.
Here’s the interview where he talks about it: https://www.endbookdeserts.com/dolly-parton-imagination-libr...
The unit cost for the publisher to put a $20 AUD book on a shelf in a book shop was about $2 AUD.
The bookstore kept quite a bit of that margin - $10 or so - but they had to pay rent & staff a store. If they were only selling $500 worth of books per day, it wouldn't have mattered if their margin was 100%, the fixed overheads would eat it all. If they could keep stock turning over quickly, the profits were impressive.
In the Netherlands competing with discount is actually illegal, interestingly enough. The selling price is fixed. Which is a boon for smaller bookshops, but annoying for publishers if the production prices aren't stable.
None of the books you get through this program are new releases. But they are printed special for imagination library.
Parton did a lot of very nice things and was a great contributor to society in good and decent ways that many of her wealth peers totally fail.
But there has since her passing been an element of myth and folklore that has elevated those accomplishments beyond reality.
Her library is a great idea and her accomplishments are really notable, but the funding in large part comes from government grants and other donors.
So to a large degree, the library program is also your tax dollars at work.
I can also walk into the library and there will be a shelf of free childrens books. Not used, brand new. Stacks of them to take home and keep.
The engine already existed, our public library system.
How good one's library is depends on how well-off the operating local government is. The Imagination Library is more egalitarian because it's often funded at county and state-level, so kids with underfunded libraries get the same level of access as other kids from wealthier zip codes
"It’s the fact they get recognised. They get this little book with their little name on it in the mail, and they feel special. They start taking pride in themselves, and they know that somebody out there is thinking of them."
Let’s not pick apart “myths and folklore”, it does not matter at the end of the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
Of course, your child is supposed to get books for FIVE YEARS and their point-of-development is also relevant... meaning yeah some are kinda rudimentary... obviously.
Some of my favorite books to read aloud to my child were from there.
Classics are in there...
But some surprise wins: - We discovered the very-popular "Llama-Llama" books from there.https://www.communitycoffee.com/pages/dolly-partons-cup-of-a...
There was a letter from Dolly to him that ended “I will always love you”. Made my wife tear up.
I remember my family getting taken to our local library every couple of weeks to return and then borrow books while I was in infants school. That made me 9 or 10 years old at the very oldest, and my youngest sister would have been at most 5 or 6 years old. So I'm pretty sure aging out of the Imagination Library is a pretty reasonable time to start that child using a "real" library, and start having several books a month available for free that way.
(I fully acknowledge the immense privilege I had having parents who understood and supported the importance of reading and education. I remember being extremely bored in kindergarten - 4 or 5 years old - and getting told to sit in the back with a few other kids who could read already and we'd read books while most of the other kids were being taught to read.)
For jewish themed books, PJ Library is a similar good service
I’m a bit incredulous of your justification - Do you also not associate with Jews that believe that Israel should exist?
Not only do a lot of kids learn like this, but for instance the little Polish that I know how to speak and read I learned like this as an adult with the help of a native speaker.
(edit - you've gotten several responses but I will say that you are correct that this sort of thing does not happen in all households; that's one reason this program is great, because it encourages this behavior)
That alone won’t teach them to read, but it will help them a lot as they work through learning.
My kids have been “learning” to read since they were born and my oldest started reading on his own at age 4-5. I didn’t push him to read at all, he surprised me when he started telling me what the signs along the road said.
My younger hasn’t taken to it quite as fast but he’s right where he should be for his age, but we read at least three books to him every day at bedtime. I still read to my older one every day (we’ve read LotR twice), even though he’s plenty capable on his own.
Oh yes it can. It won’t teach phonics, which is a very valuable skill especially in English, but my biggest struggle with phonics was that I could already read the words they were trying to use to teach us how to sound things out. Kids vary but some will already be picking up written words by 2-3 and self-guided by 5-6. Reading the same book every night is tedious to parents but really lets the kids connect shapes on paper to language.