Imagination Library launched in Port Elgin
Published Thursday May 7th, 2009
Program provides pre-school children with a book each month until they turn five
PORT ELGIN - A new family literacy program was launched yesterday at Port Elgin Regional School, aimed at instilling a love of reading in children at an early age.
The Imagination Library, founded by country music star Dolly Parton, will provide pre-school children in the area with a book each month from the time they are born until their fifth birthday.
"It's one of the most important things you can do for a child at a young age," said Port Elgin resident Amy Hesse, whose daughter Clare, 4, will participate in the program. "They need their reading skills, plain and simple, to get a job or just about anything."
The program is of no charge to families thanks to the Rotary Club of Port Elgin, which is shouldering the cost for the first year.
New Brunswick Literacy Coalition president Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell, who topped-off the announcement by reading The Little Engine That Could to a group of 12 pre-schoolers, said it's important for a child's learning process to begin early in life, even if they aren't able to read.
"It's incredibly important that children develop a love of books and a love of reading before they go to school," Trenholme Counsell said. "You don't expect a child that's two or three or four years old to read, but that they develop that love of books and that love of reading and the sounds and the pictures."
By exposing them to a learning environment early in life, she said, the children will be more apt to bloom when their formal education begins in kindergarten.
"If a child doesn't love learning before they go to school, then they're not ready to learn," Trenholme Counsell said. "If they're not stimulated, then it's very, very hard for the teachers to suddenly turn it on."
The program was founded by Dolly Parton in 1996 and had delivered approximately five million books to more than 500,000 kids in the United States, Canada and England by the end of 2008.
The books for the program will be distributed each month by Invest in Kids, a non-profit organization based in Toronto.
The provincial government already has a similar program in place. Born to Read, launched in 1991 when Trenholme Counsell was lieutenant-governor, delivers children and their families a book once each year.
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