Feeding the imagination through reading

Aug. 11—Library locations around the state participated on Wednesday, Aug. 9, in Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Day in West Virginia.

The West Virginia Department of Education and the West Virginia Board of Education celebrated DPIL Day — Dolly Day — as part of read-aloud events around the state.

The DPIL is supported through a partnership between the WVDE and the June Harless Center at Marshall University as part of the mission to support early learning and literacy efforts. The June Harless Center helped coordinate and promote Dolly Day events, which featured a read-aloud of the book "Find Fergus."

According to Dawn Dooley, director of elementary schools/assessment for Fayette County Schools, the school system has participated for several years in the DPIL, which is operated by the MU Harless Center for Early Literacy. She says the program has been a benefit.

"Fayette County is really unique in that we don't have any hospitals that we have births in, so it's very difficult for us to get children enrolled in the Imagination Library," said Dooley. "We've had the Imagination Library in Fayette County for, I think, 10-plus years.

"So, the way we enroll children is through word of mouth. In the beginning, we'd have several people that would just stand outside of grocery stores and give out applications to enroll in the Imagination Library."

In Fayette County, the DPIL is supported by levy funds "so it's all community-based," Dooley noted.

The program has served 5,400 county students overall, Dooley said.

"Right now, about 1,100 students are participating, which is about 60 percent, which is really one of the highest numbers in West Virginia because we don't have a hospital to directly give those applications to new mothers," she said. "We just have to spread this by word of mouth."

The Fayette County effort has "been honored by the state several times" for its community outreach, Dooley said.

Children can participate from their birth date to their fifth birthday.

"They receive a book a month, so they could get up to 60 books in their lifetime from the Imagination Library," said Dooley.

"The great thing about the Imagination Library is it promotes early literacy," Dooley stressed. "We know that that's a big key in successful reading for children as they enter kindergarten, so that they have rich experiences with texts that are easy for them to read, and they're very graphically pleasing to children.

"So, it just really stimulates brain growth, and it's something that we highly encourage for kids to reach as much as they can and have their parents read as much with them as they can before they start school."

Aug. 9 marked the one-year anniversary of Dolly Parton's visit to the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia for a free performance recognizing the Mountain State's full participation in the Imagination Library, according to a WVDE press release. As part of the occasion, Gov. Jim Justice issued a proclamation marking Aug. 9 as Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Day in West Virginia.

WVU Extension's Noel Mitchell, a Read Aloud board member, took part in Wednesday's event in Oak Hill.

"The Real Aloud board really is able to focus more on school-age children because we send volunteer readers into the classrooms to read to school-age kids," Mitchell said. "So the Dolly Parton Imagination Library has been super in reaching those kids before they get to school, which is also very important."

Read Aloud's overall movement was hindered in recent years by the Covid-19 pandemic because of "not having school and then not having volunteers in the schools," Mitchell said. "But we're working our way back to getting more volunteers in the classrooms this year, and we had more last year. And so each year hopefully we're making progress."

Potential volunteers can visit facebook.com/ReadAloudFayetteCounty/ or contact Dooley at 304-574-1176, ext. 2146. Volunteer training is administered at the state level.

According to Dooley, programs such as the Imagination Library are a plus in student achievement.

"We've had a two percent growth (students tested in grades 3-8 and 11) every year for the past several years," she said. "Two percent doesn't sound large, but when you're talking about 5,000 students, two percent is significant."

As part of the event elsewhere, the Kanawha County Library team introduced technology it recently acquired that will help young readers as well as students with dyslexia, visual impairments or other disabilities, according to the WVDE.

The Imagination Library mails more than 2 million high-quality, age-appropriate books each month to enrolled children from birth to age 5. That supports Parton's vision of creating a lifelong love of reading and inspiring children to "Dream More, Learn More, Care More and Be More," officials say.

For more information, visit imaginationlibrary.com.

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