ATHABASCA — It was 1995 when famed country singer Dolly Parton started her Imagination Library through her Dollywood Foundation in her home state of Tennessee, and now the famous reading program has reached Athabasca.
Parton said the seeds of dreams are often found in books and took it upon herself to ensure every child born in the state received free books every month for the first five years of their lives and the program has now spread to Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
“I got the idea through a friend of ours,” said Athabasca Rotary Club member Francis Hachey who spearheaded getting the approval. “She's in Rotary in Wood Buffalo and she’s involved in the Imagination Library in Wood Buffalo and she's actually on the (Canadian) committee for Imagination Library in choosing age-appropriate books for the children.”
“Her husband is my best friend, and they were here one weekend and she started talking about it and she kept talking about it, kept talking about it and after several visits I finally said, ‘OK, well, what do I gotta do to get it going?’”
Regardless of the child's age when enrolled, the first book is one of Parton’s favourites, a custom version of The Little Engine That Could and the last book when the child turns five is Look out Kindergarten, Here I Come! which comes signed by the country music icon herself.
Because the youth arm of the Rotary Club of Athabasca, Interact, is already a registered charity, it was some paperwork to fill out and some computer stuff to figure out but as of Jan. 6, anyone living in the T9S postal code area can sign their children up.
“They're pretty good quality books; they're not just a flimsy comic book or whatever,” he said. “I won't call them a hardcover book, but they're hard cardboard, good quality books so the kids can play with them.”
Children need to be signed up by a parent or guardian through the website link https://imaginationlibrary.com/ca/affiliate/ABATHABASCA/ to give permission for the foundation to have birth dates and if the child is signed up right from birth, they get a book every month until they are five years old. That’s 60 books in total.
And while the books are free to the families and children, it will cost the Rotary Club of Athabasca $3.95 per book, so if 10 children sign up, every month they will pay $39.50 to help cover the costs.
“Right now, it’s just the T9S postal code,” Hachey said. “Once we have a committee set up, someone will add the postal codes we want that cover our club area.”
The Dolly Parton Imagination Library has over 2,700 local program partners in five countries and in December 2022 alone sent out over 2,226,765 books with a lifetime total of 197,460,315 books given away to children around the world for free.
