Posted by jumploops 13 hours ago
“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.
The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
Interestingly, the coordinating body that selects books, facilitates distribution, and negotiates wholesale pricing is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, but per-book funding is actually entirely through local charities and so on. This means that where charities are unable to act as partners, children will not receive books, but it also means that the program can operate by growing and shrinking as local support (including from state and local government grants) comes online and goes offline while keeping the overhead for local partners low.
Dolly Parton came up with the initial local structure for her region in Tennessee and David Dotson of Dollywood scaled the operation using this decentralized model. Very impressive structure that makes this sustainable.
Here’s the interview where he talks about it: https://www.endbookdeserts.com/dolly-parton-imagination-libr...
The unit cost for the publisher to put a $20 AUD book on a shelf in a book shop was about $2 AUD.
The bookstore kept quite a bit of that margin - $10 or so - but they had to pay rent & staff a store. If they were only selling $500 worth of books per day, it wouldn't have mattered if their margin was 100%, the fixed overheads would eat it all. If they could keep stock turning over quickly, the profits were impressive.
None of the books you get through this program are new releases. But they are printed special for imagination library.
Parton did a lot of very nice things and was a great contributor to society in good and decent ways that many of her wealth peers totally fail.
But there has since her passing been an element of myth and folklore that has elevated those accomplishments beyond reality.
Her library is a great idea and her support was notable, but the funding in large part comes from government grants and other donors.
To a large degree, the library program is also your tax dollars at work.
I can also walk into the library and there will be a shelf of free childrens books. Not used, brand new. Stacks of them to take home and keep.
The engine already existed, our public library system.
How good one's library is depends on how well-off the operating local government is. The Imagination Library is more egalitarian because it's often funded at county and state-level, so kids with underfunded libraries get the same level of access as other kids from wealthier zip codes
There was a letter from Dolly to him that ended “I will always love you”. Made my wife tear up.
I remember my family getting taken to our local library every couple of weeks to return and then borrow books while I was in infants school. That made me 9 or 10 years old at the very oldest, and my youngest sister would have been at most 5 or 6 years old. So I'm pretty sure aging out of the Imagination Library is a pretty reasonable time to start that child using a "real" library, and start having several books a month available for free that way.
(I fully acknowledge the immense privilege I had having parents who understood and supported the importance of reading and education. I remember being extremely bored in kindergarten - 4 or 5 years old - and getting told to sit in the back with a few other kids who could read already and we'd read books while most of the other kids were being taught to read.)
But it brought you and your child joy, so you did need it.
It's just an assumption that rich people have everything they need or know how to get it.
All people should be included in these programs and they will mostly give back what they can because like you, most feel they are overwhelming positive.
However, wealthy people also need to recognise privilege and support rather than take; glad to hear OP chose to support.
- amazing voice
- amazing songwriter
- talented actress
- an icon for attractiveness in the 80s who was self-effacing about it
- embraced her fans of all kinds (imagine someone born when she was being so comfortable with people of all races and stripes)
- just a permanently positive force
Growing up in the 80s everything is white folks or animals but almost always it is about a boy or boys.
I think the baby books are still board books. Cordoroy’s Shapes is part of what I remember about our first’s earliest years. Reading it over and over. We even did a first birthday theme for it. My mom made triangle tarts.
After that they are floppy picture books. I suppose at this scale is is probably both economical and reflects some of the material involved.
That is just fine, though it’s just not the same as holding a hardcover.
Our kids don’t care about that, though. It’s more about the time and talking about the pictures and how well we ham it up.
And, of course, there was the Oz books.
It is interesting to me that a good story, poorly written, can be souch harder to get though than a well written boring story that just flows well.
For jewish themed books, PJ Library is a similar good service
I’m a bit incredulous of your justification - Do you also not associate with Jews that believe that Israel should exist?
The world needs more Dolly Partons, that is for sure. But lucky for us, the world has many billions of people who are willing and able to participate in the sort of mutual aid that Dolly championed.