The Impact of Book Gifting Schemes for Young Children

Article by Ferhat Tura, Clare Wood, Rebecca Thompson and Clare Lushey (Nottingham Trent University), evaluating the impact of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library on the reading behaviour of young children and families in Nottingham.

Abstract: 'We report an evaluation of a book gifting scheme (the Dolly Parton Imagination Library; DPIL) that targeted families from disadvantaged areas. We considered the impact that length of participation had on children’s interest in literacy-related activities, the frequency of parent–child reading interactions, duration of reading, and whether the parents read with their child daily.

We also compared these families to a group of non-participating families from the same city. We found that families registered with DPIL for a year or more reported higher frequencies of parent–child interactions when reading than the non-DPIL group, and were more likely to read with their children on a daily basis than those registered with DPIL for less than a year. We suggest that book gifting schemes need to be long-term to positively influence home literacy environments.'