AROUND-TOWN

Dolly Parton's library

Smart Start to oversee program that mails books to children

Dylan Elliott StarNews Correspondent
A child gets an early start on literacy in the offices of Smart Start of New Hanover County. The nonprofit is overseeing the rollout of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library locally. It mails a book a month to children birth to age 5. [CONTRIBUTED]

WILMINGTON -- Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is coming to New Hanover County.

Reading is a healthy habit but not every child has the resources to develop that habit. Dolly Parton's Imagination Library hopes to change that for the children of North Carolina.

Funding for the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth to the age of 5, has been approved by state legislatures. The program will bring free books to the children of 98 of North Carolina's 100 counties, including New Hanover.

The program mails a free, age-appropriate book each month to children who are registered.

"In New Hanover County we will have 11,000 children under the age of 5. You get your last book on the month of your fifth birthday, so if you sign up when you're born you could have a personal library of over 60 books, " said Jane Morrow.

Morrow is executive director of Smart Start of New Hanover County, the nonprofit organization that will be overseeing the Imagination Library in the area.

Dolly Parton got the inspiration for the Imagination Library by reflecting on her upbringing in east Tennessee and by her father's inability to read and write. What started as a charity program for the children in her home of Sevier County, Tennessee, now spans four countries. Over 1 million free books each month are mailed to children in participating communities around the world.

"When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. ... The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world," reads a statement by Dolly Parton on the program's homepage, www.imaginationlibrary.com.

The Imagination Library in New Hanover County has been funded for at least the next year and and a half. Smart Start of North Carolina hopes for more funding in the future that will allow the program to continue.

Smart Start aims to use the program to create an interest in reading among children that otherwise wouldn't have the means to have such an interest.

"Part of what makes it particularly exciting is when a family member signs up their child they sign in their child's name, creating a sense of book ownership," Morrow said. "We hope that creates an interest in books and reading and that level of reading will carry on to adulthood."

If you are interested in signing your child up for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, visit the website of Smart Start of New Hanover County at www.newhanoverkids.org and click on the logo for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

They also have paper forms in their office at 3534 South College Road, Suite F, Wilmington, N.C., 128412. Call 910-815-3731 for more information.

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