About Us
Our story
Imagination Library of Montgomery County, Maryland was founded by Susan & Peter Greif and Debbie Pollak in May of 2015. They share a love of books and reading, and wanted to share that passion with young children.
Susan serves as board president, and Debbie is our executive director. Peter is a board member and serves as our IT Department. Helen Teklebrahan is our program coordinator. Volunteer Shelby Speer is our newsletter coordinator and Board member Gail Hoelscher provides Spanish translations of the newsletter.
Who we serve
The program currently registers children in the 20850, 20851, 20876, 20877, 20886, 20895, 20992, 20903, 20906 and 20912 zip code areas (and starting on April 5, 2023, zip code 20879).
We have around 2,500 children enrolled, and more than 1,375 have graduated. Since our start in 2015, we have distributed more than 55,000 books.
We hope to grow the number of coverage areas as fundraising continues (as we must raise all the funds needed to pay for the books mailed to the children in our program).
History of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library was started by Dolly in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. She felt that the seeds of children’s dreams could often be found in books. She was further inspired by her own beloved father who could not read or write.
Dolly developed a program so that every preschooler in Sevier County, TN would receive their own books on a regular basis. It quickly expanded throughout Tennessee, and many communities asked if the program could be replicated in their states. Imagination Library was then offered to any community that would support a local affiliate. Imagination Library of Montgomery County, Maryland was born, and the first children were registered in May 2015.
Today, there are over 1,800 affiliates like ours in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia and the Republic of Ireland. Over 1.7 million books are mailed out every month, and over 130 million books have been distributed over the years! The 100,000,000th book was presented by Dolly to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in 2018.
Learn more at the Imagination Library national website.
It’s no wonder that Dolly is proud to be called The Book Lady. She remains committed to the idea that books can help children “Dream More, Learn More, Care More and Be More.”
Our Donors
We are grateful to the following organizations and individuals for their generous support.
We also thank the many anonymous supporters who have donated to our affiliate through the national website for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
Freddie Mac Employee Matching Program
The Children's Opportunity Fund (a component fund of the Greater Washington Community Foundation)
The Junior League of Washington
The Kay Family Foundation
Montgomery County Circuit Court Charity Campaign
Montgomery County Council
Office of the Montgomery County, MD Executive
PNC Grow Up Great Program
Provided supplies for 2020 Parent Survey
St. Paul's United Methodist Church of Kensington, MD
The Robert & Maureen Sievers Family Charitable Gift Fund
(in memory of Maureen Sievers)
Debbie Banscomb & Rick Johnson
Phyllis Castle
Joanne Colt & Tom Haslinger
Carolyn Flury
Jay Goldman & Rebecca Salon
Susan & Peter Greif
Gail Owen Hoelscher
Julie & Bruce Hunter
Veena Kapur
Marc Korman
Ellen and Jim Myerburg
Julie, Eric & Bradford Palakovich Carr
Richard & Debbie Pollak
Joan Schaffer
Barbara Tarmy
Katherine & Jonathan Tomares
About Our Logo
When we founded became an Imagination Library affiliate in 2015, one of the first steps was to create a logo.
Luckily, we have a talented artist and illustrator in Debbie's daughter, Jessica McGuirl. Developing the teddy bear logo was fun and interesting, as Jess helped us discover the essence of our affiliate - what we wanted to show the world.
We feel that every baby and young child needs special time each day with their parents (or other grownup) to sit and read together. Our logo reflects that warm feeling of connection with a young bear in his/her mom's or dad's lap sharing a book.
They're on cloud 9! They could be reading about animals, colors, folk tales and so many other things out in the big, wide world. We hope you enjoy our logo as much as we do.
You can check out Jessica's work at firstpancakestudio.com.
