Dolly Parton Is Bringing Her Free Book Program To Utah, She's Already Sent 300 Million Books Worldwide

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is partnering with Utah-based nonprofit Operation Literacy to bring free books to children across the state, following the formal agreement between the two organizations to launch the Raising Utah Readers initiative, which will call on Utah lawmakers to fund free books and literary resources for children statewide. A large-scale pilot of the program is already underway to demonstrate demand and illustrate impact ahead of that legislative push. The timing reflects a genuine need: nearly half of all Utah students from kindergarten through third grade are not reading at grade level, according to a 2026 report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, with reading levels varying dramatically across the state from under 30 percent of third graders reading at grade level in Piute School District to more than 70 percent in the more affluent Park City School District. The Imagination Library, which mails one free age-appropriate book per month to registered children from birth to age five at no cost to families, has been operating since Parton launched it in 1995 in her home state of Tennessee. It now distributes over 3 million books every single month across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland, and has provided more than 300 million books in total since it began.

Parton started the program because she understood from her own childhood in the mountains of East Tennessee what access to books could mean for a child whose dreams were bigger than their circumstances. She has described the seeds of those dreams as often being found in books, and the thousands of local community organizations that have partnered with Imagination Library around the world as the real heroes of the story, making her dream their own and extending it into communities she could never have reached alone. Aaron Hall, Operation Literacy's manager of public relations, described the partnership as an honor and said the organization could not be more thrilled to work with Parton's team going forward. More than 3 million children from birth to age five are currently registered for the program worldwide, and the monthly books are selected and sequenced specifically by age to build vocabulary, language skills, and a love of reading during the years when that foundation matters most. For Utah families in districts where reading gaps are widest, the arrival of a free book in the mailbox each month is not a small thing. Parton has always said she knows there are children in communities across the world with their own dreams, and that the seeds of those dreams are often found in books. Utah is the latest place she is planting them.

Source:https://www.ksl.com/article/51609856/dolly-parton-is-bringing-her-free-book-program-to-utah