Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which posts children a free book every month until their fifth birthday, is to double the number of London boroughs it covers.<\/p>\n
The scheme, which runs in five boroughs, will expand to 10 boroughs.<\/p>\n
It comes a month after the country singer died at the age of 80. She set up the library in 1995 in tribute to her father, who could not read or write.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Postcode Lottery, the expansion of the scheme will make 157,000 children eligible.<\/p>\n
Harriet Sedrick-Ugo, from south London, said the monthly books had given her four-year-old daughter Sienna “a lot more confidence”.<\/p>\n
“We read together every day and that’s been made possible because we get a book once a month,” she said. <\/p>\n
“She loves reading for pleasure because we have so many books at home from the Imagination Library.”<\/p>\n
Sedrick-Ugo, an early years educator, said the expansion would take pressure off families. <\/p>\n
“Buying books can be quite expensive, so if they’re going to be getting it for free, that would be something a lot of families can benefit from,” she said.<\/p>\n
She added: “I think it’s the kindest initiative ever and we are so very grateful to have something so meaningful gifted to us.”<\/p>\n
The scheme is universal, meaning every child in a participating area can sign up regardless of their family’s income. <\/p>\n
The Dollywood Foundation says more than seven million books have been delivered to children in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which posts children a free book every month until their fifth birthday, is to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-779470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}