Pictured is Beth Totten. File photo.

Beth Totten newBy Elizabeth Totten, Public Relations

(Canastota, NY – Nov. 2014) Thanks to the Friends of the Library Book Sale, the Canastota Public Library will be able to continue the Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL) for another year. The Friends have very generously contributed $5,000 from their annual sales to support early literacy in the Canastota community.

Many volunteers worked throughout the year to make the October Book Sale a success.  They collected donations and spent countless hours setting up, organizing materials by genre and category and serving as cashiers. Others baked cookies for shoppers, assembled raffle baskets and helped customers find and carry purchases to their vehicles.  Their annual sale always receives compliments from shoppers as being well organized and very reasonably priced.

The library is grateful to our many volunteers for giving their time, talent and energy so selflessly.

This financial support from the Friends is monumental as the original $30,000 grant Canastota received from the Central New York Community Foundation to start DPIL is rapidly running out. The Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL) was started by Dolly Parton in 1996 in her home community as a way to inspire children and families to dream big and turn those dreams into a brighter future.  To do this, DPIL provides a new, age appropriate book each month to children from birth to age 5. Each partner community provides funding to purchase the books at a steep discount and pay for mailing costs. DPIL covers all administrative expenses and provides logistical support, training, financial management and other support services.  DPIL costs approximately $25 per year per child and Canastota currently has 225 local children enrolled.

This program is very important because a student not reading at his or her grade level by the end of third grade is four times less likely to graduate from high school on time and six times less likely if from a low-income household. A 2009 study by researchers at Northwestern University found that high school dropouts were 63 times more likely to be incarcerated than college grads. Getting books into the hands of young children and reading with them daily gives a child the best possible start in life. And being a good reader may result in more favorable life outcomes.

Donations to the Canastota Public Library Dolly Parton Imagination Library program are gratefully accepted in any amount year round.  Please contact Library Director, Liz Metzger, at 697-7030 for more details.

 

By martha

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