Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 17, 2009
Imagination Library aims to develop young minds through reading
David Laprad
There is an age when one of life’s greatest pleasures is listening to someone read you a story. With each new page comes extraordinary images that invite wide-eyed inspection, while the brisk rhythms and snappy rhymes are as captivating as anything can be. The years from birth to kindergarten can be a magical time, full of innocence and wonder.
It’s also a formative age, allowing parents and others to develop the mind of a young person through the simple, and pleasant, act of reading. “Even though there’s a lot of technology out there, research is showing that exposure to print material makes a difference,” says Mary Beth Ikard, communications director for the Governor’s Books From Birth Foundation, which works with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to deliver a free book each month to 210,000 children in Tennessee.
Ikard says a child brought up listening to people read is going to be better prepared for school than one that hasn’t been exposed to books because he’ll have a better listening vocabulary. “Children exposed to books prior to kindergarten enter school with a listening vocabulary of 20,000 words, versus 3,000 for a child that didn’t have that exposure,” she says, “So you can imagine how much more the child will be able to grasp.”
Children might not know the definition of every word a person reads to them, Ikard says, but if a book is well written, he’ll come to understand its meaning through context clues. For that reason, Parton appoints a panel of early childhood education experts to choose the books that become a part of the Imagination Library. Most of the titles the group has selected are “vocabulary rich, with lots of rhyming,” says Ikard.
One of the favorites in the library is “Llama Llama Red Pajama,” which deals with the trials of bedtime and separation anxiety using a simple rhyming scheme. The final book in the library will soon be “Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come,” which deals with the variety of personalities a child will encounter at school. “It’s a wonderful book, with all kinds of unique words. If a child hasn’t been exposed to daycare or preschool, it can prepare him for experiences with diversity, as the book contains characters of all different nationalities and cultures,” Ikard says.
Parents and guardians can acquire children’s books from a variety of sources, including bookstores, the Internet and their local library. But when someone can’t afford the expense or has limited access to a free resource, the child loses out. For that reason, and to encourage regular reading, the Imagination Library will send one book per month to the home of a child through the age of 5.
“If you register the moment your child is born, you can receive up to 60 books,” says Ikard. “And you can register any time during those five years, so if you don’t hear about it until your child is 2-years old, he can still benefit from three years of books.”
The books in the library are age appropriate, and children are placed in a group depending on how old they are. Also, to keep costs low, Penguin Books is the sole supplier. The cost per child is $28 per year, half of which Books From Birth pays; the Imagination Library affiliates located in each of Tennessee’s 95 counties pay the other half. “There is a fund raising need,” Ikard says. “For $14 a month, you can sponsor a child for an entire year.”
People who want to make a donation to the program can go through the Birth From Books Web site at www.governorsfoundation.org and designate their online donation toward any county in the state.
Each county in Tennessee has at least one Imagination Library affiliate, whether it’s the United Way in Hamilton, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Davidson or the public library in Knox. The only thing all of the affiliates have in common is status as a 501c3 non profit organization.
The Imagination Library began as a gift from Dolly Parton to the children in her home county. As it spread to other counties, Governor Bredesen took notice and decided he wanted to see it statewide. In 2004, he approached the state legislature and secured $2 million in seed money for Books from Birth. Today, all 95 counties are on board, and the Imagination Library has spread across the continent to 47 states and Canada.
To register your child, visit www.imaginationlibrary.com. Ikard says it will be worth your time, today and in the coming years.
“We know that children who learn to read early come from families with books, and that literary experiences at home contribute to a child’s development,” she says.
“And there’s a ton of research that says reading to a child at an early age leads to higher achievements in school. You can’t excel in science, math and social studies if you don’t have good language comprehension skills.”
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