Early Child Development and Care.
This study investigated the impact of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library worldwide on children’s emergent literacy skills aged three to five years. The Imagination Library delivers age-appropriate books to children from birth to age five in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Caregivers responded to 11 questions relating to the child’s emergent literacy skills prior to receiving any books (baseline; N = 18,488), six months later (Survey 2; N = 8,441), and around six months after completion of survey 2, i.e., 12 months from baseline (Survey 3; N = 4,842). Data from caregivers with children who participated in the Imagination Library for at least 12 months (N = 4,842) were compared to data from caregivers that had just enrolled in the program but had not yet received any books (N = 16,477). Caregivers reported that children in the Imagination Library were more likely to demonstrate emergent literacy skills including concepts about print, alphabet knowledge, receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and phonological memory compared to children in the comparison group. This suggests that participation in the Imagination Library is associated with enhanced emergent literacy skills in young children.