Imagination Library delivers last book

By Lauren Radomski (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, November 30, 2007

Mary Phillipe

Mary Phillipe still remembers running out to the mailbox as a kid to get her monthly Highlights Magazine.

“I knew nobody else got to read it first,” she said, referring to her family of nine siblings. “It was mine.”

That excitement, said Phillipe, interim director of the United Way of Otter Tail County, is mirrored in the young children who’ve benefited from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a United Way partner program that provides children five and under with one new book each month.

But due to a lack of funding, Imagination Library has delivered its last books in Otter Tail County — at least for now.

“My plan is to suspend it for six months and, for that time, work diligently to find those funds to start the program anew with a plan of sustainability,” said Teresa Dahlstrom, Library program coordinator.

Imagination Library is funded primarily by the Dollywood Foundation, which has provided approximately 17,000 books to 1,400 children in Otter Tail County since the partnership began 14 months ago. The United Way pays for postage, a cost of $3,000 to $3,500 each month. Funding for Imagination Library comes not from the United Way’s general campaign but from private individual and business donations.

As important as Imagination Library is, Phillipe said, the United Way can’t afford to pull money from campaign beneficiaries like the Salvation Army.

“There are basic human needs that need to be met first,” she said, “especially this time of year.”

Yet the importance of reading to young children shouldn’t be underestimated, said Beth Achter, a member of an Imagination Library advisory committee and the Early Childhood and Family Education/School Readiness Coordinator for Fergus Falls public schools. In the pre-kindergarten years, she said, when a child’s brain is rapidly developing, sounding out words, rhyming and following predictable patterns benefit the child later on.

“The more words a child knows and understands when they enter kindergarten, of course, the easier it will be to learn to read,” she said.

Reading to young children also strengthens bonds between kids and parents, Achter said, and helps instill a love of reading at an early age.

A book arriving in the mail specifically for a child makes reading all the more meaningful, Dahlstrom said.

“Books get read more with the child initiating that excitement,” she said.

In coming weeks, parents of Imagination Library participants can expect postcards from the United Way explaining the pause in the program. Dahlstrom and Phillipe said they hope the break with be just that — a pause, a chance for donors to step forward and bring the Imagination Library back later next year.