LONGSWAMP TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has had far reaching impact.<\/p>\n
The initiative has helped thousands of children develop an early interest in reading.<\/p>\n
“They love reading,” says Brandywine Heights mom, Elizabeth Melcher, of her two young children. “They’re very excited to get the new books.”<\/p>\n
“It’s just nice,” says Jana Swoyer, also a Brandywine mom. “The connection we get as a family to read the book together, and it’s usually books that we would never really pick up at the library or a bookstore.”<\/p>\n
Moms of young children in the Brandywine Heights Area School District praised Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends a book every month for children from birth through five-years-old. The program is offered as part of the district’s Bullet Academy.<\/p>\n
“The books are leveled, so they start with some very simple board books with colors and shapes and things like that and they progress as the child gets older,” says Marcella Acosta, Brandywine Heights Area School District Early Childhood Coordinator for the Bullet Academy. “They are adapted more for the child’s age.”<\/p>\n
Since the start of the year, students in the Brandywine Heights Area School District have received more than 1,380 books through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.<\/p>\n
The Brandywine Heights Education Foundation sponsors the program for the district, but donors and sponsors all over make the initiative positive.<\/p>\n
Just last month, Dolly posted on X thanking Berks County-native Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce for a $2 million donation to her Imagination Library.<\/p>\n
“You know the mission of the Dollywood Foundation is to dream more, care more, learn more and be more, and thank you again for your very generous gift and we’ll continue that mission even in bigger ways now,” Parton said through a video posted on the social media platform.<\/p>\n
“Her father was illiterate, and his dream was for all his children to be literate and so this was a dream of hers, to be able to put books in the hands of our youngest learners,” says Acosta.<\/p>\n
“There’s libraries, but this is different, this is your own library that you get to share with your kids and giving something like that is priceless, honestly,” says Melcher.<\/p>\n
Other school districts and organizations in Berks County also participate in the Imagination Library program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONGSWAMP TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has had far reaching impact. The initiative has helped thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,232,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-272854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}