Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Conference

Earlier this month, Give a Book was lucky enough to attend the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library UK conference “Exploring Evidence, Inspiring Imagination”. The Imagination Library has delivered 80 million books to pre-school children worldwide. Dolly Parton launched the UK Imagination Library in December 2007 and over 23,000 children in the UK are now benefitting from the scheme.

The Imagination Library  aims to inspire a love of reading from the earliest possible age through the provision of a free age appropriate book, delivered to the child’s home each month, from birth to age 5.

The conference had a number of inspirational and informative speakers including Dr Frank Ridzi who spoke about the impact of the scheme and Dr Mary Roche who spoke of the importance of picture books in a child’s learning. The author and illustrator Nick Sharratt also spoke of his childhood love of reading and how it had lead to a lifelong love of books, reading, writing and illustrating. A brilliant day was had by all!

More information about the conference can be found here.

As Dolly says “We believe that if every kid grows up with a song in their heart and a book in their hand, well then, there’s a pretty good chance that their dreams will come true.”  We are looking forward to working with Imagination Library on an exciting new joint project, watch this space for more details soon!