With today's news, I thought I'd share this great program:

“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. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.

The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

My daughter receives books through this program and I was curious how it was sustained at a $2.5/book wholesale cost.

Interestingly, the coordinating body that selects books, facilitates distribution, and negotiates wholesale pricing is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, but per-book funding is actually entirely through local charities and so on. This means that where charities are unable to act as partners, children will not receive books, but it also means that the program can operate by growing and shrinking as local support (including from state and local government grants) comes online and goes offline while keeping the overhead for local partners low.

Dolly Parton came up with the initial local structure for her region in Tennessee and David Dotson of Dollywood scaled the operation using this decentralized model. Very impressive structure that makes this sustainable.

Here’s the interview where he talks about it: https://www.endbookdeserts.com/dolly-parton-imagination-libr...

In Tennessee hospitals a nurse, staff member, or authorized volunteer will swing by your room in the mother-baby unit and sign you up. Then you start receiving free books by mail each month until age 5. An amazing program by an amazing person!

My 5 year old just got his last imagination library book. It showed up right after Dolly passed away.

There was a letter from Dolly to him that ended “I will always love you”. Made my wife tear up.

These books are really nice quality. Anyone who has children should absolutely look into this. The content is thoughtful and diverse.

We should be more ambitious with the people we build.

I have a two year old and have been receiving Imagination Library books monthly since he was born. This is a really wonderful non-profit. It's easy to sign up, the books show up in your mailbox, and each one has a page written by an educator describing how to read it to your child. (Point out the dog, what noise does a dog make? How does the boy feel at the end? etc) Highly recommend!

We use it and my son always screen “Dolly!” When we get to her picture in the back jacket. Wonderful service from one of the best Americans to have ever lived.

For jewish themed books, PJ Library is a similar good service

We need more Dolly Partons.

We weren't signed up but as a measure of the scale of this we still wound up with a couple of Imagination Library books through book exchanges or buying used online -- i.e. there are enough of these 300M books floating around that if you have a kid there's a good chance you run into them.

I like the sibling comment "We should be more ambitious with the people we build." -- there are so many great things people with some means can be doing!

Getting books for almost 2 years now, we're so grateful to Dolly! Some very excellent books our child totally loves!

Honest question and maybe it's because I grew up without books… What values do books have if you cannot read? I started to learn how to read at 6. Are those picture only books?

28.may.2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36100992 90 comments

Getting age-appropriate books for your kid on a regular schedule is amazing. If you've got young kids (and you're in the US) get on it!

We shall never look upon her like again.

—Sent from Dollywood

PJ Library has a similar program for age 0-8. (I contacted them and they’re fine with non-Jewish families participating, even though it’s aimed at Jewish families and their children.)

Which "today's news" are you referring to?

Because of Dolly, other billionaires have stepped up to fund similar free books per month programs. She had a truly outsized impact.

If you know of any kids under the age of six get them signed up. The books come addressed in their name monthly.

Today's news being....

If you like coffee, Dolly has a line via Community Coffee (which makes great coffee) called Cup of Ambition, and a portion of each sale goes to the Imagination Library.

https://www.communitycoffee.com/pages/dolly-partons-cup-of-a...

Related on the legend RIP and some talk about the Library:

Dolly Parton has died

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49438052

My son was in this program and got some wonderful books. When he aged out he got a nice note encouraging him to keep learning. Great program. Our current billionaire class could learn a lot.