The Impact of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library on Shared Book Reading: The Three Million Word Gap

The aim of this study was to estimate children’s potential word exposure from theoretical frequencies of shared book reading (SBR) using books distributed through the Imagination Library, with implications for discussions of the “Word Gap”. Word counts were taken from 60 books distributed in Tamworth between 2020-2024, representing the same collection distributed across Australia and the books children receive from birth to age five. Using theoretical modelling methods adapted from Logan et al. (2019) , we estimated cumulative word exposure across 0-5 years for children read at different assumed frequencies. Using these hypothetical assumptions, children read five books per day could be exposed to over 3.6 million more words than those rarely read to. Under a more conservative assumption of two books per day, the potential vocabulary exposure gap still exceeded 1.4 million words. If caregivers consistently engage in high frequency SBR, they could substantially increase children’s language exposure.