[This column originally appeared in the Oct. 23, 2024 edition of the Sopris Sun.]
When I was a child, my mother did three things that turned me into a reader. First, she signed me up for a library card. Later, she enrolled me in the Landmark series of American biographies for children, aimed at kids 10-15. There were similar series: Bobbs-Merrill’s “Childhood of Famous Americans,” which ran from the 1930s through the 1960s, had famously orange bindings and were also popular.
Third, and maybe most important, my mother belonged to the Book of the Month club, which resulted in a modest home library.
My mother knew what she was doing. It happens that there’s a lot of research about all of this. I often cite a University of Nevada, Reno study conducted back in 2010. It examined 27 countries over a span of 20 years. The surprising finding was that regardless of parental income or education, just having 500 books in the home was as good as having two parents with Master’s degrees.
Early exposure to literature boosts the developing brain. It grows vocabulary. It builds empathy for others.
On top of that, children that get read to, even if just 30 minutes a day, are statistically more likely to be healthy as children and live longer as adults. They are also less likely to wind up in jail; the most common denominator of the incarcerated is illiteracy. Finally, children who get the habit of literacy are more likely to get more education and to make more money. Together, that’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
So I’m pleased to announce the Garfield County Public Library District’s new team-up with our longstanding partner in literacy, Raising a Reader Aspen to Parachute.
It all began with Dolly Parton. Back in 1995, she wanted to foster a love of reading among the children of her home county in East Tennessee. So she launched a program funded with her own money. The idea was simple: Any child between the ages of 0-5 could sign up to receive a high quality, age appropriate children’s book every single month. Children got their books in the mail, directly addressed to them, for free. And they got to keep them.
Dolly Parton’s program, now called the Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL), quickly spread to many states and beyond, including Canada in 2006, the United Kingdom in 2007 and Australia in 2014.
In 2020 DPIL came to Colorado. In our state, a local nonprofit has to agree to handle the logistics — promoting the program, signing kids up and tracking the enrollment. Raising a Reader was eager to expand the program and approached us for help.
The library’s role is also promotional, but we contribute matching funds, too, in the amount of $1.10 per book. I cannot imagine a better use of library funding than to put books in children’s homes.
Today, the DPIL sends more than one million books each month to children around the world, and to 61 of Colorado’s 64 counties, reaching about 23% of eligible children statewide.
The DPIL, now, also offers books in Spanish. Sixteen-percent of books mailed each year are either fully bilingual, in English and Spanish, or have Spanish language content.
The Colorado DPIL website claims that children participating in DPIL are 30% more likely to start school kindergarten-ready. That dovetails with our own long range plan.
In the words of Raising a Reader Executive Director Suzanne Wheeler-Del Piccolo, “Teaming up with Garfield Public Libraries and Imagination Library Colorado makes early literacy even more exciting by putting great books directly into the hands of children and families from birth to age 5, inspiring and fostering a love of reading at home. Together, we’re helping parents and caregivers create joyful reading routines at home that bring smiles and build the essential early literacy skills kids need to thrive when they start school.”
When I was a child, my mother did three things that turned me into a reader. First, she signed me up for a library card. Later, she enrolled me in the Landmark series of American biographies for children, aimed at kids 10-15. There were similar series: Bobbs-Merrill’s “Childhood of Famous Americans,” which ran from the 1930s through the 1960s, had famously orange bindings and were also popular.
Third, and maybe most important, my mother belonged to the Book of the Month club, which resulted in a modest home library.
My mother knew what she was doing. It happens that there’s a lot of research about all of this. I often cite a University of Nevada, Reno study conducted back in 2010. It examined 27 countries over a span of 20 years. The surprising finding was that regardless of parental income or education, just having 500 books in the home was as good as having two parents with Master’s degrees.
Early exposure to literature boosts the developing brain. It grows vocabulary. It builds empathy for others.
On top of that, children that get read to, even if just 30 minutes a day, are statistically more likely to be healthy as children and live longer as adults. They are also less likely to wind up in jail; the most common denominator of the incarcerated is illiteracy. Finally, children who get the habit of literacy are more likely to get more education and to make more money. Together, that’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
So I’m pleased to announce the Garfield County Public Library District’s new team-up with our longstanding partner in literacy, Raising a Reader Aspen to Parachute.
It all began with Dolly Parton. Back in 1995, she wanted to foster a love of reading among the children of her home county in East Tennessee. So she launched a program funded with her own money. The idea was simple: Any child between the ages of 0-5 could sign up to receive a high quality, age appropriate children’s book every single month. Children got their books in the mail, directly addressed to them, for free. And they got to keep them.
Dolly Parton’s program, now called the Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL), quickly spread to many states and beyond, including Canada in 2006, the United Kingdom in 2007 and Australia in 2014.
In 2020 DPIL came to Colorado. In our state, a local nonprofit has to agree to handle the logistics — promoting the program, signing kids up and tracking the enrollment. Raising a Reader was eager to expand the program and approached us for help.
The library’s role is also promotional, but we contribute matching funds, too, in the amount of $1.10 per book. I cannot imagine a better use of library funding than to put books in children’s homes.
Today, the DPIL sends more than one million books each month to children around the world, and to 61 of Colorado’s 64 counties, reaching about 23% of eligible children statewide.
The DPIL, now, also offers books in Spanish. Sixteen-percent of books mailed each year are either fully bilingual, in English and Spanish, or have Spanish language content.
The Colorado DPIL website claims that children participating in DPIL are 30% more likely to start school kindergarten-ready. That dovetails with our own long range plan.
In the words of Raising a Reader Executive Director Suzanne Wheeler-Del Piccolo, “Teaming up with Garfield Public Libraries and Imagination Library Colorado makes early literacy even more exciting by putting great books directly into the hands of children and families from birth to age 5, inspiring and fostering a love of reading at home. Together, we’re helping parents and caregivers create joyful reading routines at home that bring smiles and build the essential early literacy skills kids need to thrive when they start school.”
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