Pueblo Library District partners with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to mail free books to Pueblo County children

PUEBLO, Colo. – Pueblo City-County Library District is partnering with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to ensure children throughout Pueblo County encourage a joy of reading at a young age. Each month Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library mails free high-quality, age-appropriate books to children in Pueblo County who range in age from birth to 5 years old.

 

"I am very pleased the Pueblo City-County Library has been selected to partner locally with the Imagination Library. The program will help increase our community's childhood literacy rates, foster young people's love for books, and promote reading among our very youngest children,” Jon Walker, PCCLD executive director said.

 

Parents and guardians can enroll their children for this free program at www.pueblolibrary.org/DollyPartonsImaginationLibrary. The books are mailed directly to the child’s home at no cost to the family and the books are theirs to keep. Each book is personalized with the child’s name to create a gifting experience that makes books fun and exciting and to encourage families to spend time together reading. Enrollment in the program continues until the child’s fifth birthday.

Inspired by her father’s inability to read, Dolly Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995 in her home county in east Tennessee. The Imagination Library’s book gifting program aligns with PCCLD’s mission to encourage Pueblo County families to develop their child’s joy of reading and to support lifelong learning at a young age.

 

Rawlings Library Director Amy Nelson added, ”I am honored by this opportunity to inspire a love of reading among children in our community and to support Dolly Parton's beautiful dream that every child should have access to books. This program will prepare children for success as they develop critical literacy skills and learn that they can do, dream and be anything through the positive messages in the diverse books provided by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library!”

 

 

Since launching in 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has become the preeminent early childhood book-gifting program in the world. The flagship program of The Dollywood Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has gifted well over 172 million free books in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom,  Australia, and The Republic of Ireland. The Imagination Library mails more than 1.8 million high-quality, age-appropriate books each month to enrolled children from birth to age five. Dolly envisioned creating a lifelong love of reading, inspiring them to dream. The impact of the program has been widely researched and results suggest positive increases in key early childhood literacy metrics. Penguin Random House is the exclusive publisher for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. For more information, please visit imaginationlibrary.com.