Books for Local Pre-K's

December 2022

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Otero County has recently given books to many area Preschools.  The early childhood organization which mails books to children throughout Otero County each month (from birth to five!) decided to gift books to local preschools and daycare centers.

DPILOOC President Ryal McMurry said, “For many years we used these books to give away along the parade route at the Alamogordo Christmas Parade.  As our Board of Directors has gotten smaller, and not everyone is able to walk along the parade route anymore, we wanted to find a new way to get these books into kids hands!”

The preschool age children are the main demographic that DPILOOC works with, although their mission is to “Inspire children to a lifelong love of reading!”  Their vision is “Books in the hands of every child, Birth to 5, in Otero County,” meaning that their goal is to register all children in Otero County for the program.

Publicity Coordinator Cheeta McMurry reached out to local preschool and daycare providers.  “We got an idea of how many children and classrooms each center or organization had, and we were able to provide them with books to use in their classroom libraries or to give to kids,” she said.

Among those centers that received books were: Children’s World CDC, Full House, Full House Too, Children’s House, Learning Tree, Kids Planet II, Alamogordo HelpNM, La Luz HelpNM, Tularosa HelpNM, Mom’s Daycare, St. Francis Cabrini Preschool, Stepping Stones PreK, Holloman Elementary School PreK, and Holloman Child Development Center.  All together, almost 1,000 books were given away!

“We always love giving away books, it’s what we do,” said Ryal McMurry.  “This is a great time of year to do it, it’s particularly fun for us as we are celebrating our 200,000th book being mailed out this month!”