Thanks to everyone who did a survey so far! Double Thanks if you wrote a Comment, they make my day!

BUT! If you wrote a question on your survey, I can't respond, I don't know who you are! There are no names or addresses or any identifying information on the survey forms or envelopes!

Someone who had a baby boy in June asked to register that child, and I'd love to, but I have no idea who wrote in :(. If you know any Pomo Indian families in Berkeley who had a baby boy in June, please ask them to call or email me, or go to the Imagination Library website to get a PDF form to mail in.

Our Mission

Making books a Berkeley birthright.

We believe every child should own an excellent personal library before Kindergarten.

Our affiliation with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library allows us to register any child under age 5 living in Berkeley to receive a new, well-selected, age-appropriate book in the mail monthly.  

                                                                           Books are a gift to the child.

Imagination Library books reflect a rich diversity of people, their roles, and environments, and include some Spanish-bilingual titles. The Selection Team researches, reviews and updates the list annually following sound developmental guidelines. 

You could buy the same books yourself, but you cannot buy the excitement a child experiences when their book with their name on it arrives, nor can you buy the research, time, and care the IL Selection Team puts in to the title list.

There is no cost to register your child for the program, but that's not the best reason to do so: it's the quality of the collection; it's the recurring excitement of my book, my mail, month after month.     

We love Imagination Library because the books are excellent and because it's so much fun. And, there is plenty of research to show that the presence of books in a young child's home is the single strongest indicator of later literacy and academic success. We are joyfully confident that benefits of owning a quality book collection, from the start, will show up in test scores years down the road, and that's important. But inspires us to keep working to grow our Imagination Library Program to all corners of Berkeley, then beyond, are the stories of joy and benefit we hear and read from parents of children receiving books in the mail, every month.

Our Programs

Targeted small Programs

* "Welcome Baby" book bags: For two small programs serving expectant mothers we supply tote bags containing books for infants, including I Love You Like Sunshine , to distribute. HATCH Doulas in Oakland serve very young women emerging from difficult circumstances. Berkeley's Black Infant Health program serves expectant mothers in Berkeley and surrounding communities. Both these programs include the importance of nurturing literacy from the start; we supply new parents in their programs the tools to do so, from the start. 

*Demographically Targeted Books: We purchase books outside of Imagination Library that feature children/families of color and/or are bilingual (Spanish, mostly) for our "Welcome Baby" bags, for events we table at with partners such as Healthy Black Families and Black Infant Health, and to offer -- donation suggested! - at Baby Book Club. Our intention is to make books available to children who are woefully under represented in the children's book publishing world: over 70% of new children's books feature only or nearly only white children/families (when characters are human). It is a powerful thing to see oneself reflected on the pages of a book you hold; we want this experience to be part of every child's life, from the start.