More Than 25,000 Dolly Parton Books Distributed Locally 
 

Enough books to stretch from one end of the city to the other. That’s the gift that the Middletown Community Foundation and Dolly Parton have given to the children of northeast Butler County over the past 32 months.

The Middletown Community Foundation affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library this month passed 25,000 books distributed to local families since January 2008. The books have been received by about 2,200 individual children during that time period.

“With an average book height of 10 inches, the 25,797 books laid out end to end would cover more than four miles – the entire length of Central Avenue across Middletown from the Great Miami River to the Warren County line,” explained Middletown Community Foundation Executive Director T. Duane Gordon.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides one free, age-appropriate, expert-selected book every month to children from birth to age 5 in more than 1,400 communities throughout the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Parton’s Dollywood Foundation covers the program’s administrative costs and arranges the book selection, pricing negotiations, book ordering and mailing. Sponsors in each community cover the actual costs of book purchases and postage for the children they serve locally.

Gordon said the purpose of the program is to help prepare children to enter kindergarten ready to learn having had the shared experience of the same home library of 60 books since birth regardless of income level or family situation. The program also encourages parents to spend more time with their children while giving children with the excitement of receiving mail in their own names just like adults in their household. To provide this experience, all children in a community are offered the program absolutely free of charge to their parents.

“We’re now reaching one out of three children under age 5 in Middletown, but unfortunately that means two out of three kids in the city are not getting these books,” Gordon said. “We hope their parents will soon sign up because we believe only by reaching children at the youngest ages will we see real and sustainable long-term improvements to our school system’s performance.”

In Middletown, entering kindergarteners last school year who had been in the program scored on average 11 percent higher on literacy assessments than those who had not been in the program, which Gordon said is evidence that it is having a positive impact on those children whose parents are taking advantage of this free tool.

He added the books delivered thus far had an approximate retail value of $250,000 but cost local sponsors a total of only about $55,000 over the past two and a half years thanks to the international program’s low negotiated costs with publishers.

With about 1,600 current enrollees, the Middletown area affiliate is the largest of the 23 individual chapters throughout the state of Ohio. Allen County, with 1,500 children enrolled, comes in second, and Union County with just under 1,000 participating children is third. Statewide, about 11,000 children are involved in the program, and 15 percent live in Butler County.

About 1,200 children are registered in Middletown, where the Middletown Community Foundation launched the program in January 2008 in response to entering kindergarten literacy scores for children in the city being almost the worst in the entire state. The surrounding areas of the Monroe, Madison and Edgewood school districts were added in April of this year in partnership with the United Way of Greater Cincinnati – Middletown Area’s Women Living United initiative, and approximately 400 children are currently registered in those areas.  About 600 children have participated and “graduated” from the program due to having reached their fifth birthday.

Families may enroll in the program by completing a registration form available at many locations throughout the area or online here.