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 offer their program delivering a new, age-appropriate book every month to any child under age 5 living in Berkeley, California.
Books are a gift to the child.
We love Imagination Library because the books are so well selected. They are brand new, beautifully produced, and addressed to the child. It is such fun! Every month!
Imagination Library books are intentionally chosen to reflect a rich diversity of people, their roles, and environments. The Selection Team reviews and updates titles annually.
You could buy the same books yourself, but you cannot buy the excitement and pleasure a child experiences when their book with their name on the label arrives -- nor can you buy the research, time, and care the IL Selection Team puts in to the title list.
There is no cost for the program, but that's not the best reason to register your child: it's the collection's quality, it's the repeated fun of a gift arriving in the mail, it's the excitement of a new book every month. A common comment we get is, "Every month when their book arrives, they want to read it right away!"
Imagination Library delivers priceless fun, priceless motivation to read and share books.
(If you do have a generous book-buying budget, consider donating $25 a year for the 12 books a child receives; you'll still have plenty left in that budget to shop with. We recommend Mr. Mopp's Books, the only book store in Berkeley dedicated to children's books. It's an enchanting little store, a pleasure to visit and shop in with your child.)
