Ohio First Lady Fran DeWine drives Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Ohio which mails children one free book each month until his or her fifth birthday. Any child between birth to age five in Ohio can sign up for this free book gifting program. The Imagination Library’s high-quality, age-appropriate books help children develop critical early literacy skills before starting kindergarten. First Lady Fran DeWine recently gave an update on Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Ohio in an interaction with journalists.

Imagination Library Update

The story about the imagination library started years before Mike ran for Governor. My grandkids got books in the mail, and I found how excited they were getting the books from the mail. The two grandkids were ripping it over and saying to me, “Read to me, grandma!” They were so excited.  I thought this was cool. I found out that it was through the county library. As soon as Mike became Governor, I thought “this is what I want to do”. I wanted to make books available, not just where I was in Ohio, but I wanted to make books available to every single child in Ohio. That was fun for me. I started going to each county, picking a partner in each county. The partners raised the money. Every week, we meet a couple of legislators, and I will tell my story and help us make this happen.

Partners

The way it works now, we work with our partners in every county. They sign the kids up for books. They paid half of it and the state legislature matches the other half.

Kids

At this point, we have 412,000 kids. This is a high. We keep growing up. We give up to 412,000 kids free books every single month until they turn five years old. That is 62 % of the kids in Ohio who are under five, but really, it’s 70% of households because some people choose not to get two or three books if they have two or three kids. We encourage them to sign up for all the kids. Research shows that a child’s brain is 80% developed before turning three.

Efforts

We know we have neighborhoods where kids are not being signed up. For the whole state, we try to do birth certificates’ signing up. When a woman has a baby in the hospital and they try to fill up the birth certificate and paperwork, on the next page, they check one box and their kids are signed up. Our numbers are going up from that, and we are excited about that. Our numbers are going up in the cities, and we are excited about that too.

Number 1

We are number one in the country as far as our program. My challenge now is to make this sustainable. I am working every day to make sure that each partner raises the money. The Rotary Club is doing a lot. There are a lot of ways they are doing it.

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