Each year, an independent local Australian committee selects a special booklist of age-appropriate and culturally diverse books. This committee is aware of the importance of localising the books, so the booklist is Australian, with many well-known Australian titles, including indigenous titles, that have Australian English spelling. i.e., Color is Colour, and Mom is Mum.

Yes. Cities like Tamworth in NSW have just finished 5 years of the program which means kids who were enrolled from the start are now entering school. Teachers have found they’ve had to adjust the curriculum as the children already have strong literacy foundations and are ready to continue learning.

Yes. The program in Australia is run by United Way Australia. The books are selected here from Australian printers and publishers (other then select UK and US books), tip sheets are created and printed in Australia and the packages are distributed and delivered by Australia Post. The $9 per month covers all of that. The Dollywood Foundation provide the book ordering system and their support but funds do not go to the US.

We’re working with partners right now to get our local systems in place. But in short, when a baby is born they will be offered the chance to register their child and will receive their first book. That registration will come through to Rosie’s Reading and our volunteers will update that record and put the order through to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. A month later the first book will arrive and continue every month until the child is 5. Each book comes with a tip sheet created by specialists to help the parent or carer get the maximum benefit from using the book with their child.’

Yes. We will be working with local partners including schools and libraries to offer support for parents who may have literacy challenges. This way we can also help parents who may have low reading ability.

It’s often thought that a lack of reading only happens in poorer households but that’s not always true. A lack of reading happens for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes parents think they’re too busy, sometimes they just forget, some think it’s the school’s job to teach a kid to read. We’ll tackle all of those challenges and treat every kid and family equally.

The program is free to families and caregivers. Rosie’s Reading is working with community, government and business partners to raise the funds to keep this program running that is delivered in Australia by United Way. The cost for us to deliver the books is under $9 per month per child which is a small investment in the future of our state.

Currently there are around 28,000 children aged 0-5 in Tasmania. It costs $9 per child per month to deliver these awesome books to each home. That means that in 5 years when the program is full, we’ll need to raise just over $3 million per year. We will be measuring results, and hope that by that time, government and business will continue to chip in to keep the program running, after all, literacy is proven to save the government money. As Dolly would say “You’ve just got to try.”

Not yet, but we’re working on it. We can still offer a receipt through our platform, but our DGR (Direct Gift Recipient) status from the ATO is in process now.

Rosie Mostogl was Rick’s Mum (the President of Rosie’s Reading Inc). She didn’t have great literacy skills after a pretty bumpy childhood, but becoming a parent proved to be a catalyst for her to polish her reading, and books were a very important part of the household. Rosie passed away in 2022 and this charity has been set up to give a warm hug to all of Tassie’s Kids from Rosie through the gift of reading.