Radio documentary focusses on Dolly's books

Guardian journalist and author Sarfraz Manzoor will examine the under-fives book gifting scheme in a half-hour Radio 4 show.

He spoke to Dolly Parton herself—who launched the library in 2007—as well as Dollywood Foundation president David Dotson and has visited Rotherham.

He said: “I met some of those children, along with their mothers, at the Coleridge Children’s centre, which offers family learning programmes that look at the benefit of sharing books and the importance of reading out loud to children.

“One woman told me that reading to her baby had inspired her to start reading more herself, to set a good example, while an Asian woman said that the books were helping illiterate parents to learn to read English, with children reading to their parents.”

The scheme has seen more than 13,000 kids sign up for their free monthly book. But there has been criticism because of the strain on the public purse.

More than £500,000 of the total cost has been footed by the taxpayer so far. This year alone, Rotherham Borough Council is spending £230,000 to keep the library rolling.

Project manager Alison Lilburn said: “Because we have other initiatives to assist reading, it isn’t easy to measure how much the Imagination Library has helped.

“But we do know that year on year Rotherham has improved in terms of its education, language and literacy development and we are now the same level nationally, when in previous years we have been way below the national average.”

Sarfraz Manzoor’s How Dolly Got Rotherham Reading is on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 10.30am.