The Dolly Parton Imagination Library hosted a Family Carnival at Midtown Hall on Sunday to help meet the growing demand for books.
The Library currently provides around 525 books a month for Prince Albert children, but has a waiting list of 40 kids who haven’t received one. With that in mind, organizers held a carnival on Sunday to help boost their numbers.
“That was part of the reason we really wanted to do a lot of fundraising,” said Rachel Lavigne, one of the Library’s fundraising committee members. “We have 40 children, right now, on our waitlist. We base every month off of the finances (asking) ‘where are we sitting at?’ So we wanted to boost some of our finances so we can approve more students or more children to get books, because we’re hoping to bump that up to 550 every month if we can.”
Each family attending the carnival paid $20 to take part. The entry fee allowed families to enjoy fun activities like a bouncy castle, face painting and carnival games.
Lavigne is a teacher at Carlton Comprehensive Public High School, but has two small children at home. She said her kids love to do carnival activities on the weekend. She thought if her kids loved the activities, others would too.
“I said to the committee, ‘why don’t we try it?’ It’s our first kind of thing. It seems to be quite successful,” she explained.
“We tried to have lots of different things for all different age ranges as well, so hopefully for $20 a family could stay here for an hour or two or even longer.”
The results were successful. Lavigne said they hoped to attract 200 families to the event. They happily surpassed that total by lunch time.
Many attendees are hoping the Library holds a second carnival next spring.
“We’ve already had tonnes of families say, ‘hey, what about a bigger venue? What about adding this? What about doing that? I think as word gets out, more businesses might be interested in sponsorships and we’ll have more volunteers and things,” she said. “We’re already maybe looking into maybe next spring when we maybe won’t have snow on the ground.”
Other activities included the presence of the Easter Bunny, character appearances, on site canteen and the availability of firefighters and fire truck on site. Lavigne gave a special thanks to the community sponsors and volunteers who helped make the event a success.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Canada is a free book gifting program devoted to inspiring a love of reading in young children. In partnership with local community partners, enrolled children receive monthly, a high quality, age-appropriate book in the mail, free of charge.
The Library was created by country music star Dolly Parton. It began in the United States, and expanded to Canada following an announcement in 2006.
For information on how to register, visit imaginationlibrary.com.
–with files from Michael Oleksyn/Daily Herald
