The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently announced it would freeze enrollment in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a literacy initiative that offers one free book per month for children from birth until five years old. More than 20 states provide full or partial funding for the program, which claims to have donated over 300 million books to kids in the U.S. and elsewhere. The beneficiaries includes 170,000 Missouri children, but the state’s Republican-dominated legislature decided to cut the program’s funding from $6 million to $2 million.
As a teacher and author for children, I know the consequences of these cuts are all too clear. I have witnessed firsthand what it looks like when children do not have access to books. Such a drastic cut to such an important service is more of the same as far as this country’s continued acts of political and economic violence against its own citizens.
The impact of access to books is also a symbolic one.
From literacy advocates to the American Association of Pediatrics to even the current U.S. government, everyone agrees that early childhood literacy is critical. According to Take Action For Libraries, a nonprofit political action committee, early access to books paves the way for a lifetime of learning, with more books in the home potentially leading to higher educational attainment.
The impact of access to books is also a symbolic one. I grew up in a working-class household and could feel, at a young age, that my family’s socioeconomic status did not measure up to that of many of my peers. We lived in a small walk-up apartment in Brooklyn; we spent most weeks surviving paycheck to paycheck. While many of my classmates and friends were in similar (or worse) positions, others enjoyed vacation homes, their parents’ new cars, and all manner of resources not available to the rest of us. Those kids could afford educational and enrichment opportunities. We had to hope and pray for many of the same chances — or settle for free alternative, if there were any.
But while my family did not have much, we did have books. Though my parents read little, they made sure the bedroom I shared with my sister was stocked with stories. We often devoured several books a week, having to resort to rereading them if we finished them before our next trip to bookstores or libraries (another institution currently under attack). Had Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library been available in the 1980s, there is no doubt my parents would have taken advantage of this program. And while families of any income can participate in Parton’s initiative, as with any universal social program those with the least will suffer from cuts the most.
It is a certain kind of person who sees early and easy access to books as a bad thing. Part of my role in schools involves visiting classrooms for teaching observations. I will never forget one school I was assigned to observe in rural Wisconsin. I sat at the teacher’s desk as he picked up the autobiography of Pakastani activist Malala Yousafzai. I expected each student to grab their own class copy so that that they could read along with him—so that they could huddle over the book at their desks, feeling its pages and connecting with the words in ways that every reader understands.
Some children had their own copies, likely furnished by their parents. But most did not. Instead, the teacher read his one copy aloud, while those without a book stared at each other, kicked each other under their desks, doodled in their notebooks, picked at their fingers, and participated in any other distraction they could think of – all because they simply could not see the words on the page.
Christina Wyman
Christina Wyman is an author and teacher living in Michigan. Her latest novel is “Breakout.” Her debut novel, “Jawbreaker,” was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023.