When Samantha Granquist and her family pull into their long gravel driveway, there is a sense of excitement and suspense in the car as her two young children wait to unwrap a brand new book.
Beginning before the two children’s earliest memories, they have received an age-appropriate book every month as part of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
Granquist wasn’t raised as an avid reader, but when she had her first child — a little girl named Vay — she was determined to make sure that her children would be good readers.
“A reward is, you know, ‘if you hurry up and brush your teeth, we’re gonna read two extra books tonight,’” Granquist said. “And my kids are running to get their teeth brushed as fast as they possibly can.”
Granquist has seen the outcome she wanted in part thanks to Lewis County’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library program. But the program has also had an unexpected impact on the family.
Granquist now lives with one of the world's smallest and most passionate Dolly Parton impersonators.
Vay, who is the oldest of the two children and the first to begin receiving the books, has become obsessed with Dolly Parton. Not long ago, she dressed as Parton for Halloween and costumed her little brother, Nix, who was about 2 at the time, as a cow, inspired by an old story of a young Dolly Parton being led home by her family cow, Bessie.
Vay has also had a Dolly Parton-themed birthday party, and a Dolly Parton wig and glittery Dolly Parton inspired cowboy boots are staples in the Grandquist home.
Granquist said Vay has also channeled her Parton passion into embodying many of the lessons taught both by books and espoused by Parton herself. Last year, Granquist found that Vay, possibly inspired by Parton’s famous song “Coat of Many Colors,” was giving her coat to classmates who were cold.
“She just has kind of embodied that, I don't know, old-soul, super-kind, super-giving, treat-everyone-with-respect image,” Granquist said.
The Granquist family first enrolled in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in 2022 when they returned to their home county from Bellevue with their 2-year-old daughter. Granquist recalls knowing about the program earlier, but being reminded of it during a visit to a pediatrician in Centralia.
They signed up immediately and, as the program promises, Vay received a book once a month until her fifth birthday. The family still receives a book every month for Nix.
“She gets more excited about the Imagination Library book than her brother,” Granquist said. “Because it's still coming from him, and she's like, ‘Oh, Dolly book’s here.’ Because in her mind, you know, she's still getting one.”
With Nix signed up from birth and Vay signed up around the 2-and-a-half year mark, the family will have received more than 60 books by the time Nix turns 5, all without paying a dime.
But that didn’t just happen.
Lewis County first began participating in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library back in January of 2020 as the United Way of Lewis County and three local Rotary clubs launched a pilot program with $20,000 in fundraising. According to longtime Twin Cities Rotary member Anil Puri, they first planned to start the local program with just $7,500 in funding, with $2,500 coming from each of the three local Rotary clubs.
In a more than pleasant surprise, the Centralia Rotary Club came to the table with $15,000 in fundraising. By the end of 2020, the word “pilot” had been dropped. In the words of a key contributor, United Way of Lewis County Executive Director Angela French, “we were rollin.’”
Just two years earlier, the program had simply been a longshot idea discussed by a few local Rotarians.
Puri recalls in the early months of 2018 an incredibly active member of the Twin Cities Rotary Club who is now deceased, Mike Crouse, told his fellow Rotarians about an incredible early literacy program called the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Even better, he had a great example of it working just to the south, where clubs in Longview and Kelso had partnered with the United Way of Cowlitz County to participate in the program.
Over the next two years, local Rotarians in Lewis County got to work figuring out how they could help establish the program in Lewis County. That meant meetings with Rotary leaders from Cowlitz County, meetings with local education leaders such as Centralia School Board President Tim Browning and then leader of the United Way of Cowlitz County Brooke Fisher Clark.
Eventually, realizing they couldn’t run the program on their own, the local Rotary clubs came to the United Way of Lewis County for help.
“We said ‘there's no way we can execute it. We need a lot of help,’ and we approached United Way of Lewis County,” Puri said.
The United Way took to the idea quickly aiding the local Rotarians in understanding how much it would cost to do the program and how they could manage any increasing costs from increasing enrollment.
The Rotarians originally wanted to fund the program with the proceeds of an annual auction, but the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic quickly ended that plan. So the United Way and local Rotarians started fundraising in other ways, like asking individuals to sponsor a child’s book delivery at $31 a year and asking local businesses for annual contributions.
United Way of Lewis County Resource Development Director Chris Judd said the United Way pitches the program to donors as an investment in local education. According to Judd, if someone wanted to recreate this program on their own, they would likely have to pay more than triple what it costs through the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program.
“When you're talking about investing in early childhood literacy, it's such an unbelievable value, and that's been something that I've really wanted to make sure people understand,” Judd said. “If you were to try to just start this up on your own, you couldn't. You couldn't even come close to what the Imagination Library's been able to do with their partnerships with manufacturers and publishing, and to get the deal that we're getting.”
According to French and Judd, the program today serves a steady stream of as many as 2,300 children. Roughly 4,000 children like Vay have graduated since the start of the program, meaning the program has served upward of 6,000 children in Lewis County without their families paying a dime.
Behind the scenes, that success has taken significant effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fundraising and funding from the state to pay the roughly $70,000 a year tab it takes to provide books to these children and families.
“The goal is to always enroll as many young kids as possible, but that also takes the cost,” French said.
The United Way, with significant volunteer help from the local Rotary clubs, raises roughly $35,000 a year to contribute to the program and handles local enrollment. The state of Washington contributes the other 50% of the funding, and the imagination Library takes care of the books and the deliveries.
The state match came along in 2023 when people such as French and even local legislators like state Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, advocated for the program in the Legislature. That funding was briefly compromised during the current budget cycle as cuts hit the state budget, but a big time charitable donation saved the day, preserving the 50-50 match.
French and Judd said the Lewis County program is also in a good spot either way after building up its savings in hopes they would help preserve the program for years to come.
Now, with the recent death of Dolly Parton, who founded the program inspired by her illiterate father, the program is hoping to celebrate the country music icon with a special event at 86’d Reserve on Friday, Sept. 25 — or 9/25 — in honor of Parton’s hit song “Nine to Five”.
The event hosted by the restaurant, which is owned by local Rotarian Jeannie Graber-Gluck, will feature music and celebrate Dolly Parton’s life while also serving as a fundraising opportunity for the early literacy program. The event will line up with “Give Like Dolly Day,” announced earlier this month by the Dollywood Foundation.
The event will feature live music, a dressup contest and more. It will kick off on Saturday evening at the 86’d Reserve starting at 5 p.m.
For more information on the event, check the 86’d Reserve Facebook page or visit https://tinyurl.com/yvvsp272.
To support the Imagination Library locally, visit https://tinyurl.com/3n34rkxs.
