North Country community members are raising money to keep Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library going in their region.
Started by the legendary musician in 1995, the program delivers books to the homes of children from birth to age five every month for free. Parton says she was inspired to start the program in her home state of Tennessee because her father couldn’t read or write. It’s now expanded to deliver books all over the US and other countries.
“[It’s] honestly pretty amazing,” said Courtney Vashaw, a librarian at the Whitefield Public Library who has served as the program’s North Country administrator. Right now the program is open to any family in the North Country, including communities in Coos County and much of Grafton County.
She says the goal is simple: to get books into the hands of children and family. If a family signs up when their child is first born, they could get 60 books delivered to them over the course of that child’s early life.
“There’s no income barrier, there's no crazy paperwork,” Vashaw said. “It's just super easy.”
The Imagination Library selects the books and arranges the mailing, but it requires a partner in the region to pay for shipping costs — about $2.60 for each child every month. In September, Vashaw learned that the federal grant that paid for those costs in the North Country, and was supposed to last for three years, had abruptly ended after only a few months of funding.
Local families who have participated in the program say it’s provided clear benefits to the region’s children.
“I think more kids would be stuck in front of screens and televisions if this doesn't continue,” said Ryan Peffer of Bretton Woods, a stay-at-home dad with a three-year-old son enrolled in the Imagination Library who said he was sad to hear the program could end.
But now Vashaw and her library are raising the money to cover the Imagination Library shipping costs for the region themselves, and she says local businesses and community members have been eager to pitch in.
Erik Becker of Lancaster donated to the fund, even though his five-year-old son has now aged out of the program. He says his son looked forward to getting the books in the mail, and he even got a happy birthday video sent to him from Parton for his last birthday.
“We wanted to make sure that other kids have access, too, because he's gotten endless enjoyment out of his time in the program,” Becker said.”
So far the community has raised enough money for the 600 North Country children currently enrolled in the program to receive books for at least the next year. But Vashaw says the work isn’t over. She hasn't raised enough money to support those enrolled kids for future years or other children whose families hear about the program later and want to sign up.
“We're going to just pay those bills as long as we can.”
