The last several years have been a nonstop barrage of bad legislation and targeted attacks on public libraries and public schools. Another program which has been under assault at the state level is one whose benefits are well-researched and whose cost is so low that it’s clear the attempts to revoke funding are about cruelty, rather than budget challenges: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
The Imagination Library is a national program that sends books to children from birth through age five for free every month. This builds the personal libraries of young readers from the start, something that has proven through the research to be one of the best indicators of success in school and literacy. This is especially true for young people with disadvantaged backgrounds.
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Launched in Dolly’s home county of Sevier County, Tennessee, in 1995, Imagination Library became so popular so quickly that it was replicated on a national level beginning in 2000. Several other countries take part in the program today, and as of 2023, over 200,000,000 books have been distributed through the program. Roughly one in six U.S. children under five are part of the program.
The program’s setup requires a local affiliate or partner to team up with the Imagination Library. Where the Imagination Library secures wholesale pricing for the monthly titles, it’s the local affiliates who supply the funding and spread the word among the community. It’s common, for example, to see various county United Way organizations being the partner; in my community, it’s the United Way who pays for the books and who markets the program to parents throughout the county. My daughter did not have access to the Imagination Library program until she was three, when the United Way stepped in to fund it, but she’s received a gorgeous and meaningful book every month since, thanks to this partnership. We are fortunate to be able to afford new books and we have a fantastic public library at our disposal, but neither of these things are universal for others in my town nor in my county more broadly. There’s also something powerful in knowing that my daughter and her peers in the program will have also read an array of identical books, giving them several connection points as they begin their formal educational journey. Every one of them begins with receiving The Little Engine That Could and ends with reading Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come! The titles each month reflect an array of diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences.
Budgeting for the Imagination Library isn’t limited to county-level organizations, though. In some locales, the state budgets for Imagination Library and splits the cost of the program with county organizations. This allows the program to operate further across the state, as it allows the poorest and most rural communities better access to the literacy program that their more wealthy and urban peer communities have. Like with state funding for public goods, it’s a pool of taxpayer money creating equity for all.
And that right there is why the program’s become a target in several states. Legislators see providing children with free books from the time they are born until they turn five years old is an unnecessary expense, despite the mounting evidence that such access is a key tool in growing success. That the books create a common connection and highlight an array of voices and perspectives is only further fuel for targeting the program.
In February 2025, Indiana legislators proposed chopping the paltry budget the state allocates to the program. For the 2024-2025 year, the Imagination Library line item was $4 million in a state budget of over $51 billion dollars. This announcement came after the state itself had cited the Imagination Library as why their child literacy rates had increased. A loud reaction to this decision led to Indiana’s governor promising that the program wouldn’t be going away. But instead of being an item funded by the state budget, the governor’s wife would take it upon herself to host fundraising events and garner private donations for it. For the 2025-2026 year, the Imagination Library has finally reached readers in every Indiana county, but the governor’s wife hasn’t met the fundraising goals initially laid out (and the governor also did not reup funding through the state). With no guaranteed funding match from the state–and the reliance on private donations raised by one person–the future of the program remains a big question mark. It could disappear at any moment.
The fight to protect the Imagination Library has heated up in 2026.
Kentucky officials proposed cutting their state spending on Imagination Library this session, as part of cost cutting measurements to the budget. In 2021, Kentucky’s state budget began to match local sponsors of the program dollar for dollar; this year, the state’s contribution was proposed at one third of the local match (so the partner organization would cover 2/3 of the book costs and the state, just 1/3). This came despite evidence that the Imagination Library program helped Kentucky children grow their test scores in reading. The new formula for funding the program would have led to nearly 80% of the county programs being shut down within a year. OVer 138,000 children in the state receive books through the program.
The good news is that thanks to advocates speaking up and out about the damage this change in funding would cause, Kentucky’s full dollar-for-dollar match of the program was returned to the budget. That didn’t come without a lengthy fight.
The same can’t be said in Washington, though. The state eliminated their contribution to Imagination Library programs in the next budget. This cut was a possibility last year, but the state restored the funding to the program last minute. Eliminating the state’s contribution counters what legislators promised in 2022 when they created and committed to legislation about the free book program.
And this week, reporters brought to light the way in which California’s attempts to help fund Imagination Library in the state were bungled.
As of writing, two additional states attempting to develop and fund Imagination Library programs are in a holding pattern. Initial excitement about the initiative in Alabama earlier this year has led to the state bill developing the Imagination Library in a holding pattern–to be on the Senate calendar but not yet placed on the Senate calendar. Pennsylvania’s House passed a bill to develop and help fund Imagination Library in December; as of writing, it, too, hasn’t been added to the Senate calendar.
What this amounts to is exactly what we’ve seen happening since the rise in attacks on education and literary access began in 2021: a continued belief that, despite evidence to the contrary, there’s not value in educating young people or providing them with the most basic resources to help them develop curiosity, literacy, and appreciation for the written word. There is no “caring about the children” here. There’s only taking from the most vulnerable and weak again and again and again. With all of the research on the importance of early literacy–and early access to literature, including in home libraries, particularly among the most disadvantaged children–it’s clear government priorities aren’t on the well-being of its citizens. The importance is being placed on pet projects and advancing an agenda which will require more reliance on the state, not less. As Trump himself said since 2016, he loves the uneducated because they vote for him.
It’s likely we’ll see the Imagination Library targeted in the next budget cycles, both in states where the fight’s already been underway, as well as in additional states. The fight to protect access to books, to literacy, and to education continues to grow, and those of us who are passionate about preserving access for young people should be aware of what’s not only happening in libraries and schools, but in research-backed programs like this one.
We’re fighting for access and for our rights on countless fronts, and we’re fighting beside our neighbors, colleagues, and total strangers to preserve the constitution. We’re fighting for unbelievably small drops in the bucket of state and federal budgets and issues–but every single one of these fights matters because each is about preserving the dignity of humans existing in America and beyond.
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