The Imagination Library Program: Increasing Parental Reading Through Book Distribution

The Imagination Library Program and Kindergarten Readiness

“…In the race to seek low-cost interventions to put children on the track to long-term educational success, the DPIL is a rapidly expanding model of choice for many communities, distributing more than 800,000 books per month internationally (The Dollywood Foundation 2015). While previous research suggests that longer enrollment in the program is associated with enhanced home reading behavior (Ridzi et al 2014), this study suggests that communities implementing DPIL are justified in expecting a subsequent elevation in kindergarten readiness as defined by LNF. With respect to our initial research questions, we found the following:…”

“…This research (Singh et al 2015) found that participation in DPIL and supportive programming led to familiarity with and use of print-based forms of literacy (i.e., parents reported that they were using the books with their children). In a related study, we surveyed families after 10 months of implementation and learned that longer enrollment in DPIL was associated with more child-directed reading and story discussion; this remained the case even when analyses controlled for child age, gender, income, parental education, race, parental nation of birth, and primary language spoken at home (Ridzi et al 2014).…”

“…The provision of age-appropriate books is intended to catalyze family reading events in which adult caregivers read to a child from the book that arrived with the child’s name on it. Together, the arrival of the book and the ensuing reading experience are intended to create a positive social and emotional culture around reading and the written text that might, in turn, lead to the educational gains noted in educational and psychological literature (Ridzi, Sylvia, and Singh 2014; Singh 2015; Singh, Sylvia, and Ridzi 2015; Yeager and Walton 2011).…”

Children's Literacy Experiences in Low‐Income Families: The Content of Books Matters

“…Our findings have implications for book distribution and intervention programs that aim to facilitate children's language and literacy outcomes and for child‐care centers, Head Start centers, and preschools that provide literacy materials to families (Dickinson, Griffith, Golinkoff, & Hirsh‐Pasek, ; Ridzi, Sylvia, & Singh, ; Zuckerman & Khandekar, ). For example, the nationwide Reach Out and Read program distributes millions of children's books to families every year and has been found to effectively increase families’ engagement in book sharing and promote children's expressive and receptive language outcomes (High et al., ; Zuckerman & Khandekar, ).…”

Community Leadership through Conversations and Coordination: the Role of Local Surveys in Community Foundation Run Community Indicators Projects

“…The foundation had been frustrated in the past by making investments using publicly available national data only to be thwarted in its efforts to measure and monitor progress using the same data sets (Ridzi 2012 ). Following investments in new staffing skilled in data analysis and program evaluation, the foundation was able to pilot more rigorous program evaluation of its literacy efforts and furthermore able to document its progress in changing not only the outcomes of program participants, but also neighborhood and community level data improvements (Ridzi et al 2014 ; Singh et al 2015 ; Ridzi et al 2016 ). Emboldened by this success the foundation sought to build a similar infrastructure that could be used for other future programming and that could both reliably measure the efficacy of foundation grantmaking and empower local grant recipient partners and collective impact peers to achieve a data driven norm for decision-making, collaboration and ongoing refinement of efforts.…”