The books will be sent to pre-schoolers with siblings who attend classes at G.O. Bailey Primary School once a month until the younger children enter school. In exchange, the family signs an agreement to see that someone reads to the younger child once a day. The older child serves as a "reading ambassador" who helps the program keep track of how much is being read.  

"So far, things have gone very smoothly, very well," G.O. Bailey Principal Joy West said Monday. " We're very pleased so far. Of course, the books are sent to the pre-schoolers, but our students are excited about getting the books in the mail, too.  

"We have about 30 Hispanic families participating, and a lot of times their children are so bright but they come to school with language difficulties that make it hard for them. This is really promoting language development, and we're seeing  them get excited about reading."  

West said some Bailey students have asked their parents if they can have a baby so they can be in the reading program.  

The books come to Tifton through the Ferst Books Foundation, a non-profit organization that mailed out its first books in March 2000 in Madison in partnership with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Founder Robin Ferst Howser said she met with David Dotson, executive director of the Dollywood Foundation, in 1999 and "sort of made up the possibility of replicating the program they were doing" in Georgia.  

Four years later, Ferst Books serves children in 11 Georgia counties – Morgan, Greene, Putnam, Hancock, Jasper, Washington, Hart, Newton,Seminole and Calhoun – and has mailed out more than 70,000 books. The organization's goal is to have its program in all Georgia counties.  

"Ferst Books orders the books in the program in partnership with Dollywood Foundation," said Howser. " We do all the data processing and fundraisers to keep the cost of the program low for our partners. There are over 240 communities around the country that participate in this way with Dolly, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs which sends the books to children on Indian Reservations.  

"Our foundation only uses Dolly's program as the basis for providing resources to parents and as a catalyst for early childhood reading efforts in each community where we go."  

The local pilot differs from most Ferst programs in that its "champion," the Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence, plans to test school-age children to determine its effectiveness and is raising funds locally.  

Howser said studies have shown that children develop much of their capacity to learn in the first three years of life, when their brains grow to 90 percent of their eventual adult weight. "The key is to start at birth," she said. "To immerse a child in a literacy environment can be a stronger
predictor of literacy and academic achievement than family income. The more words a child hears, the larger the child's vocabulary, and the larger the child's vocabulary, the more likely the child will be a proficient reader."
 

On the other hand, children who get off on the wrong foot with reading often never catch up. Howser said researchers at Yale found that children who were poor readers in the third grade have a 75 percent chance of being poor readers as high school students.  

"On a personal note, I became involved in wanting to give books to kids because I love to read," she added. " I am hearing impaired – having become profoundly deaf as I grew up. If not for reading, I would not have succeeded, first in business/finance and then as the founder of what is
becoming a major non-profit organization.  

"Books gave me a confidence that I might not have known otherwise. Books opened to me a world of possibilities and helped me overcome challenges. And books were always fun for me. I would not had been as successful had it not been for a caring family who took the time to read to me. I wanted to share that a little with other children whose parents might not value reading as
much as they could if they had books in their home."