The Dollywood Foundation UK is a charitable company registered in England & Wales, and in Scotland. The charity is a branch of The Dollywood Foundation Inc. and was established specifically to deliver Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to children living in the UK. The Imagination Library is the flagship programme of The Dollywood Foundation, and it is dedicated to improving children’s lives by inspiring a love of reading. Children enrolled in the Imagination Library receive a free, high-quality, age-appropriate book personally addressed to them every month until they turn five. Receiving a new book every month creates memorable moments for children and their families and has been shown to help literacy development. As Dolly Parton often says, ‘You can never get enough books into the hands of enough children’.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has become the preeminent early childhood book-gifting programme in the world. It first launched in the USA in 1995, with 1,760 children enrolled from birth to age five in one community. Since then, the Foundation has engaged thousands of organisations and partners, and touched the lives of millions of children and families around the globe. As of July 2024, over 3 million books are now mailed monthly to children in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK and Republic of Ireland.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library began with Dolly’s desire that every child, regardless of their family’s income, would have access to books. Growing up in poverty, Dolly witnessed as a small child how her father’s inability to read and write held him back from achieving his dreams. With her father as her inspiration, the Imagination Library comes from a very personal place for Dolly. The programme’s universal approach is also rooted in Dolly’s personal experience. She recalls what it felt like to be treated like a poor family that received handouts. She doesn’t want any child to feel like they are receiving the books because they are poor, and instead this gift should be for all children in the community.
Dolly calls this her heart program – she pictures families connecting, snuggling and sharing great stories together. While early literacy development and community impact take place, fundamentally, it is about connecting families around books and knowing that children will continue to do what they love doing. Dolly believes that the seeds of dreams are often found in books, and the seeds planted in local communities can grow across the world. She knows there are children in every community with their dreams and wants all children to Dream More, Learn More, Care More and ……..Be More!
How It Works
The Imagination Library is delivered in partnership with The Dollywood Foundation UK and local community organisations. Each local Imagination Library is championed and operated by people in the community, securing community ownership, and making sure it complements existing local projects and services. Local partners promote the Imagination Library and register children via our secure online book order system. The Foundation works with a range of partners to set up local programmes. Any community can participate in the Imagination Library if the offer of enrolment is available to all children aged between birth and five years within the community. All the books are new, and two are special editions with a welcome letter inserted in the first title and a letter of congratulations inserted into the last title, which the child receives the month they turn five.
All titles in the Imagination Library are published by Penguin Random House UK and carefully selected by a panel of experts in early childhood development and reading. The selection of books is refreshed regularly, so families with multiple children will receive new books to enjoy.
The frequency and duration of the Imagination Library’s book gifting are what makes the programme unique, and it has wide-ranging impacts on communication skills, vocabulary, school readiness and literacy development. Children registered in the programme at birth receive up to 60 books, creating their own personal library at home.
Further Reading – https://imaginationlibrary.com/uk/
