LIVERPOOL – Children in Queens County can now sign up for a program that sends them a free book every month, all courtesy of a music icon.
Through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, kids up to five years old get an age-appropriate children’s book every month.
Since 1995, the literacy initiative has distributed more than 314 million books to more than three million kids in Canada, the U.S., the UK, Australia and Ireland.
Joanne Veinotte, one of the co-ordinators of the Queens County affiliate with Kaylee Oickle, says about 70 local children are already signed up. She hopes to get 260 participants.
“I, as a mom and as a grandmother, have always believed in the importance of reading to your kids,” she says.
“And when I had grandkids of my own, I was just stumbling through social media one night and I just fell upon this website and I thought, what is this? … So I reached out to the executive director. And I said, ‘How do I make this happen for our kids here in Queens?’
“So, every month, the children that are enrolled in the program receive a free book, mailed to them with their name on it. I don’t know if you remember when you were a kid, the importance of getting mail to yourself was big. And if there are multiple siblings in the house, they each get their own book, in their own package. So that’s also a plus.”
Veinotte says that all funds raised locally benefit the local chapter. The Dollywood Foundation administers the overall program and helps affiliates raise money, but it doesn’t keep any of the money donated.
“The funds go directly to the books for the kids. What they provide is the infrastructure.”
Veinotte uploads the information on the kids in her affiliate with mailing addresses to the library’s Canadian head office, which takes care of all the shipping. Each country has its own literacy specialists who curate the book lists and decide which books are sent to the kids.
“They’re cross-cultural,” she says.
“I think my younger grandson received a book about the alphabet, and it had Innu references and things like that, which was fascinating. And my daughter-in-law said, ‘The best thing about these books is they’re books that I wouldn’t really have picked up off the shelf,’ but they’re instantly the kids’ favourite books, because they’re all unique.”
The first book kids get is The Little Engine that Could because that’s Parton’s favourite, Veinotte says.
“I know that we have a poverty problem in Queens. And I really want to reach as many of those families as I can so I can get books into the hands of kids that wouldn’t normally have books.”
She said she and Oickle have just begun to get families to sign up for the program. And she hopes to do more outreach and promotion in the coming weeks.
They’ve created a Facebook page called, Imagination Library of Queens County, with information on how to sign up. People can also go to the main website at imaginationlibrary.com and click on the “check availability” option and search by their postal code, or they can email imaginationlibraryqueens@gmail.com.
Veinotte says she also plans to have registration forms available at various locations around Queens County, including the Thomas H. Raddall Library in Liverpool.
Even though she says she’d like to focus on getting kids from lower-income households to sign up, the program is open to everybody regardless of economic background.
“We know that we have parents who can absolutely afford to buy their children books, and perhaps when they get comfortable with the program, they will also make a donation so that other parents who maybe aren’t able to afford those books can go in and get those books,” she says.
“We have limited funds, but I’m good for now, and I’m always going to be pounding the payment to look for more donations from the parents and the local businesses.”
She said she was able to get the local affiliate going thanks to a generous donation from the J and W Murphy Foundation and from White Point Beach Resort, where she used to be the general manager.
It costs about $50 a year to send each child a book a month through the library, she said.
“There are different books for different ages for different months. So, it’s not like if you have two siblings in the family they are getting the same book.”
By Rick Conrad, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 07, 2026 at 08:07
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