The impact of shared book reading on children’s emergent literacy skills: a worldwide study of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

This study investigated the impact of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library worldwide on children’s emergent literacy skills aged three to five years. The Imagination Library delivers age-appropriate books to children from birth to age five in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Caregivers responded to questions relating to the child’s emergent literacy skills prior to receiving any books (baseline; N = 18,488), six months later (Survey 2; N = 8,441), and around six months after completion of survey 2 (Survey 3; N = 4,842). Data from caregivers with children who participated in the Imagination Library (N = 4,842) were compared to data from caregivers that had just enrolled in the programme but had not yet received any books (N = 16,477). Caregivers reported that children in the Imagination Library were more likely to demonstrate key emergent literacy skills including alphabet knowledge and receptive and expressive vocabulary compared to children in the comparison group.