DOLLY PARTON’S IMAGINATION LIBRARY IS NOW AVAILABLE IN MAYFIELD AND ROCHERLEA.

A monthly home delivered book program for children from 0-5 years old, free of charge to families.

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.

Reading to your child from a young age will help their language development and assist them to develop the skills to read themselves as they get older.

There’s more to this program than just the reading. Giving a child pride of ownership, offering a child the chance to get excited each month when that gift arrives allowing them to build a relationship with books being an exciting gift. In addition, research also shows that recall is better when we read on a physical page.

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.

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.

Contact Rosie’s Reading via message or support@rosiesreading.org and we will update your delivery address. Please let us know as soon as you know, because a book may already be on the way to the old address.

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 child to read. This is a community challenge and as they say “it takes a village to raise a child”,

Books may arrive at different times of the month, but you should receive a book within 5 weeks of registration. Please message us if you don’t.

Keep in mind, you should also go to your 2 week CHaPS visit, where you will receive your Little Tasmanians book from Brand Tasmania. This isn’t part of the library, but we love that you get this Tasmanian book first :-)

No.

The program is free to families and caregivers.

Rosie’s Reading is working with community and business partners to raise the funds to keep the program running. The cost for us to deliver the books is $9 per month per child (or $540 across 5 years).

Our target is to have it available to ALL Tasmanian children but that will cost us a lot more money than we currently have.

As a board, Rosie’s Reading believe that we do not make a promise we cannot keep. So we want to make sure that any child that starts the program will receive their full 5 years of books. Our board budget for each suburb 10 years in advance. With 105 suburbs it’s a big task, but we know that if we opened every suburb first we would not be able to support the demand.

As Rosie said to Rick before she passed away, you just have to start small somewhere.

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.”

Yes.

For individual donations, with the support of United Way Australia, a donations portal has been set up for donations with DGR status. These funds go directly to our ‘book fund’ with no administration or transaction fees. Thank you United Way!

Statewide and Suburb Sponsorship packages purchased by business can be treated as your normal marketing expenses.

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.