Memphis has always been a city that shows up.
We show up for our neighborhoods, our schools, our families, our traditions, and our future. We celebrate what makes this city special, but we also understand that building a stronger community takes steady, everyday investment.
One of those investments is simple, tangible, and easy to picture: a book arriving in a child’s mailbox.
For a child, that package can feel personal. It has their name on it. It belongs to them. It becomes part of their bedtime or morning routine, part of a basket of favorite books in the living room, or part of a growing library on a bedroom shelf.
And for many families, it is one more tool to help prepare a child for school and for life.
Porter-Leath’s Books from Birth program provides early literacy resources to children from birth to age five by mailing free books each month to more than 30,000 Shelby County children through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. That means roughly half of all Shelby County children five years old and younger are growing up with books arriving in their mailbox every month.
That reach is worth celebrating. But it also shows us where more work is needed.
Access is not yet equal across Memphis and Shelby County. While some neighborhoods have reached enrollment levels above 70%, others remain closer to 30% to 40% participation. Those gaps represent thousands of children who could still benefit from books arriving at their homes.
At Porter-Leath, we see the value of this program in very real ways. A parent or grandparent may help a child turn the pages of a new favorite story or a baby may reach developmental milestones after hearing words, rhythms, and sounds long before they can read independently.
For many children, these books may be the first books they have ever owned. That matters.
It is not just books delivered in Orange Mound, Frayser, Whitehaven, Hickory Hill, South Memphis, Cordova, and neighborhoods throughout Shelby County. It means families have the tools necessary to spend intentional time building both emotional bonds and their own home libraries. Families gain a simple, consistent way to make reading part of everyday life.
When children grow up around books, they are exposed to new words, new ideas, and new ways to connect with the people who love them. Reading together can build vocabulary and early reading readiness, plus create moments of attention, comfort, curiosity, and joy.
Early literacy is often talked about in terms of school readiness, and that is important. But the impact can reach further. Children who are familiar with books, words, and stories often enter classrooms with a sense of confidence that can support them as they grow.
For Memphis, that matters.
The children learning to love books today are the students, workers, leaders, caregivers, creators, and neighbors who will help shape this city in the years ahead. Supporting early literacy is one way we invest in that future before children ever walk into a classroom.
What many people may not realize is that while Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides the infrastructure and helps keep costs low, local county affiliates fund the program themselves. As the Shelby County affiliate, Porter-Leath operates Books from Birth and raises the dollars needed to purchase and mail every book that reaches a child’s home.
It costs $25 to provide a child with a year’s worth of books or $125 to provide a child’s entire Books from Birth library – five years of monthly books.
Donations from Memphis residents, businesses, and organizations help fund the books and postage costs that make it possible for children across Shelby County to receive books each month at no cost to their families.
During the current program year alone, Porter-Leath’s Books from Birth program has mailed more than 345,000 books to Shelby County children.
That number is powerful because it represents more than books. It represents monthly moments between children and caregivers. It represents families receiving support at home. It represents a local commitment to early learning.
Today, Porter-Leath’s Books from Birth is the largest Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library affiliate in Tennessee and among the largest in the country. That is something that should make Memphis and Shelby County proud. It also brings a responsibility to sustain the program for the children who are enrolled now and the children who will become eligible in the future.
Across the country, some Imagination Library affiliates have already begun pausing or capping enrollment because funding has not kept pace with demand. Please consider giving a gift of $25 or more to sustain Books from Birth and support the youngest children in our community. Visit porterleath.org/turn to donate.
The goal is simple: keep books moving into homes and keep access open for children who need them. That will take continued local support.
It will take people understanding that Books from Birth is not only a national program with a recognizable name. It is a local program with local costs, local families, and local impact.
Memphis often talks about the importance of building opportunity. Books from Birth is one practical way to help create quality, early learning opportunities. A book in the home will not solve every challenge a family faces, but it can open a door. It can give a parent and child something to share and can help make reading familiar, joyful, and part of daily life.
That is how early literacy begins: not as an abstract idea, but as a routine, a relationship, and a resource that families can use to build strong readers. Supporting early literacy is one more way we can choose the city’s future.
