The Verde Valley Imagination Library reached a new milestone last year by giving over 20,000 free books to young children in the area.
VVIL is the local affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which provides free books to kids around the world. Every month, a free age-appropriate book is mailed to any child age 5 and under enrolled in the program regardless of their family’s income status.
In 2020 when schools, daycare centers and libraries were closed or offering limited services because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ImaginationvLibrary program was a valuable resource for many families. On a national level, the program, founded in 1995, gave out its 150 millionth book during the pandemic. Locally, VVIL sent out over 23,000 books to more than 2,000 toddlers in the Verde Valley last year.
Jean Barton, board chair-woman of VVIL and a retired pediatrician, said reading to kids at an early age, even to infants, is instrumental in helping them develop strong reading skills and allows them to perform better in school later on.
“Believe it or not, the foundation for learning how to read is actually language and vocabulary, which develops in the first three years of life,” she said. “Kids whose language and vocabulary is behind at age 3, that’s a marker for who will struggle in school and have trouble reading.”
Only 42% of students in Arizona passed the English language arts portion of the AzMERIT assessment in 2019. Around 44% of students in Yavapai County passed the ELA portion of the test, while only 32% of Camp Verde Elementary School students passed, 44%of Cottonwood-Oak Creek Elementary School students passed, 60% of Clarkdale-Jerome Elementary School students passed and 63% of Sedona Elementary School students had passing grades.
In addition to benefiting them in school, reading to babies and small children helps parents bond with their children, teaches kids to listen, helps them develop a longer attention span, supports cognitive development, improves their imagination and builds their vocabulary among other benefits, according to the Children’s Bureau.
The listening skills, reading comprehension and vocabulary kids learn by being read to in those early childhood years also helps kids succeed throughout the rest of their lives, Barton said.
“Basically, it allows them to learn everything,” she said. “Once they have the mechanics and the comprehension skills to read, that’s when they read to learn. … Be it computers, or math, or science or anything else, if you can’t read and process what you’re reading, it’s pretty hard.”
Because reading to children is beneficial as early as infancy, VVIL works to get kids involved at birth. When babies are born at Verde Valley Medical Center, the parents are given a book from the Imagination Library: “The Little Engine That Could.” Then, if parents are interested, they have the option to hear more about the program and enroll.
VVIL is an all-volunteer nonprofit run through the Rotary Club of the Verde Valley. The local affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is required to raise the funds to pay for the books in the valley each month, including paying for the return of undeliverable books. The group is also responsible for enrolling kids and keeping their mailing lists up-to-date.
In February 2020, the majority of the organization’s grant funding slowed down because of the pandemic. But that didn’t stop VVIL from raising money through its own fundraisers to keep books in children’s hands. Later in the year when fundraisers were no longer a safe option, it held a sponsorship drive and received additional grant funding to keep them afloat.
For more information, to enroll or to donate to Verde Valley Imagination Library, visit VVILbook.com.
