First lady reads at Story Time in Havre

The children at a Havre-Hill County Library Story Time last week had a special guest reader, when First Lady Susan Gianforte read "Sleep Train" by Jonathan London.

Gianforte is traveling the state talking to and working with local libraries to promote the statewide access to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

She said she has now been to 33 counties out of Montana's 56, and it has been going well,

"The affiliates have been really receptive, and they've been interested in just getting more kids registered," she said.

Plant a Seed ... READ! in Havre has been active in Dolly Parton's Imagination Library for some time, working to enroll eligible children up to age 5 in Blaine and Hill counties in the program.

A release said that Dolly Parton's Imagination Library has become the preeminent early childhood book-gifting program in the world since it launched in 1995.

The flagship program of The Dollywood Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Imagination Library has given more than 200 million free books in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and The Republic of Ireland. This is achieved through funding shared by The Dollywood Foundation and Local Program Partners. The Imagination Library mails more than 2 million high-quality, age-appropriate books each month to enrolled children from birth to age 5.

Gianforte said she had been working on getting Imagination Library statewide, available in every Montana Zip Code, since last August.

The start of June, she announced the program had gone statewide.

Gianforte, who was traveling with her husband, Gov. Greg Gianforte, as he made multiple stops in the Golden Triangle Wednesday on his 56-county tour, said the response has been good.

"Back in August, there were about 8,500 kids, and now we're just shy of 20,000," she said.

That's about a third of the 60,000 eligible children in the state, Gianforte added.

"So I think it's going really well," she said, adding that they had a soft launch in May and the official hard launch in June.

She said the program provides high-quality age-appropriate books every month.

"It's free for the children and the parents, the money is raised elsewhere," she said. "It helps with getting kids ready for kindergarten by being read to, being used to sitting and listening and maybe talking about the book."

People can go to the website at https://imaginationlibrary.com to donate to the program - it costs $30 a year to give a child books every month for the year - or they can donate to Plant a Seed ... READ!, which regularly fundraises for the program.

People can make donations to Plant a Seed ... READ! on its website at https://www.plantaseedreadmt.org .

She said other states that have had the program statewide have demonstrated that it does help prepare children for school.

She said people can go to the website to register their children.

"Imagination Library dot com is the key," she said.