MANSFIELD — Dolly Parton is coming to Richland County.
No, the country singer won’t be here in the flesh. Rather, a universal reading program bearing her name is in the works to begin distributing books to children under the age of 5 across the county.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a program that supplies preschool children their own library of books to encourage a love of reading and learning from a young age. Each month from the day a child is born until his or her fifth birthday, an expert-selected book arrives in the mail for the child to enjoy with the company of an adult.
Since its inception in 1995, the Imagination Library program has served more than 1.3 million children and mailed more than 100 million books, and grown to encompass participating communities across the country and the world.
Neighboring counties like Ashland, Knox and Morrow each have their own Imagination Library programs. In Richland County, a program has been trying to get off the ground for the past decade.
It wasn’t until May of 2017 when local pediatrician Celia Flinn went into partial retirement that the Imagination Library really took off. Flinn took on the role of main coordinator for the local program, and Mansfield’s Community Health Access Project (CHAP) signed on as the Imagination Library’s 501c3 partner.
“We’ve done everything that Dolly Parton wants as far as paperwork, and now we’re in our fundraising era,” Flinn said.
The group is attempting to raise $15,000 in order to commit to giving 200 local children books from the Imagination Library for the next three years. The average cost for each child is $25 per year.
Flinn said the group is starting by sending books home with newborns from the hospital, estimating around 880 babies in Richland County will receive a book at birth. After that, the child will receive a book once a month until his or her fifth birthday, which means by the time that child starts kindergarten they will have amassed a collection of 60 books in their own personal library.
Reading to a newborn may seem silly at first blush, but according to Flinn, early brain stimulation can help set a child up for learning success later in life.
“There’s lots of brain cells when you’re born but the connections aren’t there, and 80 percent of those connections are formed by the time a baby is eight to nine months old,” Flinn said. “When you make all these connections, it’s much easier for kids to learn. If you don’t read, if you don’t use those connections, the brain prunes back on sections, and it’s hard to learn it later.”
Not only does the act of reading help form brain connections, but the fact that reading takes place together helps form a positive bond and relationship between children and parents.
“One of those things that strengthens those connections in the brain are positive sensory experiences,” said Deborah Dubois, outreach coordinator at the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library. “We need to make it a fun thing for parents to do, because it’s the positive experiences that strengthen those connections.”
A 2016 study by the American Medical Association found that a “word gap” particularly in low-income households can lead to later learning delays. According to the study, young children from low-income families heard approximately 600 words per hour compared to 2,100 words per hour for children from high-income families.
In addition, the study found that lower-income parents have been observed to use fewer complex sentences and rare vocabulary words, and ask fewer questions of children. This qualitative and quantitative difference in language exposure often leads to later disparities in children’s academic achievement.
That’s where the Imagination Library comes in. All preschoolers in a community are eligible to participate in the Imagination Library program, and sitting in a loved one’s lap while turning pages and associating pictures with words also develops a powerful association between reading and love.
“Speaking from a teacher’s standpoint, it becomes a good habit,” said former teacher Christina Rose. “I’ve had kids in my classroom that aren’t good readers, and it becomes a battle. I don’t want a kid to hate school, we want a kid to learn to love to read or learn, and having them have that habit, it becomes innate in them.”
For the women behind Richland County’s Imagination Library, they see an investment in reading as an investment in the community’s future.
“An investment in early childhood education, reading, literacy, is going to make a difference for how may kids graduate from high school, how many go on and become productive members of society, and all of that starts when they’re babies,” said Dubois. “If you don’t start when they’re little, it’s too late sometimes when they’re older.”
For more information about Richland County’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library or to donate towards the cause, email RCDPIL2018@gmail.com.
