By Jean Cole
jean@athensnews-courier.com
November 24, 2007 07:26 pm
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What if your child could get 60 free books – one a month – before he or she started kindergarten?
It would be a great deal and it would probably make your child look forward to getting and reading a book each month.
Country signer Dolly Parton is making it possible for students in the Tanner school district.
The district recently joined Dolly’s Imagination Library, a program designed by the singer to put free books in the hands of children to foster a love of reading.
The book-of-the-month club begins with “The Little Engine That Could” and culminates with “Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come.”
Tanner Principal Billy Owens applied for the program and was accepted and the school is now taking applications from interested families. The school will pay about $6,000 a year for books for about 250 families. That amount will be covered by Title I grant money.
But there are other ways to sponsor a program at your school. Popular sponsors include the United Way, local businesses, civic groups, local government, private citizens, educational foundations, churches, chambers of commerce or school systems.
Parton launched the program in 1996 in her native Sevier County in east Tennessee as an effort to “foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families.”
Today, more than 7 million free books have been mailed to more than 330,000 children across the United States.
When the program was so successful in Sevier County, Parton and her Dollywood Foundation devised a way to include other communities and secured Penguin Group USA as sole publisher for the Imagination Library.
Communities are able to join as long as they followed these rules:
• Make the program accessible to all preschool children in their area
• Pay for the books and mailing
• Promote the program
• Register the children
• Enter the information into the database
The Dollywood Foundation takes over from there.
For information about joining Dolly’s Imagination Library, go to her Web site: www.dollysimaginationlibrary.com.
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