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    Dolly Parton’s program to give free books to kids has expanded to California.

    Corinne Segal
    By 
    October 6, 2022, 2:35pm

    More than 2 million children just became eligible for free books: California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Senate Bill 1183 to establish Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Program in the state and specify how it will operate.

    The program will use money from a dedicated fund “to provide age-appropriate books on a monthly basis, at home, to each child registered in the program, from birth to their 5th birthday, inclusive, at no cost to families, through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.”

    The program, which was founded in 1995 and is “dedicated to inspiring a love of reading and learning,” operates in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Having begun as an initiative to provide books to children in East Tennessee, where Parton grew up, it has now given away more than 190 million books to date.

    California Dolly Parton Imagination Library nonprofit

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