Haley Nartker has always been committed to fostering a love of reading in her two young children. Nartker’s mother works as a librarian for Clark County, she said, so “books have always been a huge part of our life.”

Reaching her reading goals for her family became easier, Nartker said, after she enrolled her 2½-year-old daughter in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a program that mails a free book to participating children each month. 

But those books will not arrive anymore starting in November after the program’s state funding dried up, a loss that experts and families say will harm efforts to boost early childhood literacy in a state where only about 4 in 10 third graders read proficiently. 

The Clark County affiliate of the program provided books to more than 18,000 children younger than 5 every month. It was run by Storied Kids, a nonprofit organization formed in early 2023 with the goal of bringing Imagination Library to the Las Vegas area. 

Storied Kids received a $920,000 grant from the state’s Early Childhood Innovative Literacy Program in June 2023 and sent its first Imagination Library books to children in Clark County that July, according to executive director Meredith Helmick, who runs the program with her husband. 

Almost immediately, Helmick recalled, news of the program spread. Soon, Storied Kids was sending books to thousands of children every month. 

“The desire was there,” she said. 

But the grant provided to Storied Kids in 2023 ran out this year and was not renewed in the last legislative session. 

In the 2025 session, Assembly Speaker. Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) sponsored AB358, which would have allowed Imagination Library to operate statewide. That bill proposed $4.6 million for the United Way of Northern Nevada (UWNN), which runs Imagination Library in Washoe County, to administer the program’s services statewide. But it died in the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee. 

Yeager did not respond to a request for comment from The Nevada Independent. 

After AB358 stalled, Helmick said funding was almost secured through SB460, a major education bill signed by the governor this year. But that option fell through, too, when a clause providing money toward innovative educational programs was removed.

Tom Clark, a lobbyist who helped advocate for AB358 on United Way’s behalf in 2025, told The Indy that he believed the Legislature cared about promoting childhood literacy but “just did not have the resources to support it this time around.”

The Imagination Library affiliate in Washoe County also lost state funding in 2025. The Legislature provided a $330,000 grant for the United Way program through its 2023 “Christmas tree” bills for Nevada nonprofits. That funding was not renewed this year, but so far the Washoe County version of the program has been able to survive.

The Legislature — facing a bleaker revenue picture in 2025 than in 2023, when it had a surplus — did not authorize any “Christmas tree” grants this year, according to John Etzell, executive director of a family support organization, Boys Town Nevada, which received a grant in 2023.

Supporters of Imagination Library say it is a crucial tool in encouraging Nevadans to start their children reading at a young age. It’s a goal that will become even more important in 2028 when a state law takes effect that will hold back third graders who cannot read at their grade level.

Only children younger than 5 are eligible for Imagination Library books, an age cutoff Helmick said ensures “that families build this collection before children even go to kindergarten.” The books families receive every month are tailored to their children’s age, according to the program’s website. 

Denise Tanata, an expert on early childhood systems with the Nevada-based nonprofit The Children’s Cabinet, said that reading is critical to “cognitive comprehension and social-emotional development” and cited studies which have established that early literacy contributes to longer-term language skills.

But reading is sometimes lower on the “hierarchy of needs” for Nevada’s most vulnerable families, she said, who must choose between “putting dinner on the table or buying a children’s book.” 

The Imagination Library program provided a solution to this problem, Tanata explained, by giving families a free and simple way to encourage reading before children entered the school system. 

Helmick said she found the loss of funding especially disheartening given that Imagination Library has relatively low costs and huge payoffs for child literacy. 

Dolly Parton’s national organization covers all the overhead costs of launching the program and pays for the books to be shipped to each student. Local affiliates, such as Storied Kids, find families to enroll and purchase the books themselves.

“It is so incredibly cost-effective,” Helmick said. “You can make a huge impact in early childhood literacy for just $2.75,” the number she estimated Storied Kids spent per month per child.

Tanata said she hopes for the return of Imagination Library to Clark County but also that the state takes a more coordinated approach toward early childhood literacy. 

“The more we can prioritize early childhood education,” Tanata said, “the less we’re going to need to intervene later on.” 

‘A very reliable program’ for busy families

Helmick said she and her husband were inspired to begin the Clark County program when they attempted to sign up their daughter for Imagination Library and realized the service did not yet operate in Las Vegas. Dolly Parton founded Imagination Library in 1995 in her native Tennessee. The service now works with more than 2,700 local partners, including in Canada, Australia and Ireland, and delivers more than 3 million books every month. 

Being able to access Imagination Library “felt like something was taken off my plate,” said Nartker. “I cannot always be focused on getting new books, and having a very reliable program that once a month would give us a new book to introduce into our little library — that was very powerful.”

Helmick said she felt proud that Imagination Library made it easier for families to incorporate reading into daily or weekly habits. In a 2024 survey of Storied Kids’ participating families, the share of families that reported reading to their child daily rose from 29 percent to 59 percent after joining the program. 

Katarina Rivers, a mother of three in Las Vegas, said the books have enabled her two older children to connect with their 2-year-old baby sister by reading to her on what her family calls “Dolly days.” Her daughter loves music, Rivers said, and her favorite Dolly book so far was an animal-themed songbook.

Rivers said she especially appreciated that the books opened new opportunities for reading for families that cannot easily access a public library. 

“Not all families have transportation to take kids to and from the library, and not everyone can go and spend money on books,” she said. 

Since Storied Kids’ Oct. 8 announcement that the program was ending, Rivers and her friends have been distraught, she said, and seeking ways to connect with elected officials.

Imagination Library services that operate in other parts of the state are not shutting down. Representatives of the programs in Boulder City, Lincoln County and Washoe County confirmed their services are still running. The Imagination Library website also lists a service in Pahrump as active.

The loss of funding nearly ended the Washoe County Imagination Library program, which is administered by the United Way of Northern Nevada and also launched in 2023. But UWNN spokesperson Daniel Amaya told The Indy in a statement that the program was able to continue operating and was “working with the Northern Nevada Reading Coalition, the Rotary Club of Reno and the Rotary Club of Sparks to raise money to keep the program going.” 

UWNN is also soliciting donations from the public for further support.

Amaya and Helmick told The Indy they were hopeful the Legislature would reconsider funding Imagination Library in Clark and Washoe County in a future session or in the special session that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has indicated he will call this year. 

Clark, the lobbyist, said he believed funding for Imagination Library was unlikely to be secured during a special session but that he remains optimistic about corporate partners stepping in to save the free books. 

Helmick is optimistic, too. She said Storied Kids would need about $650,000 to sustain the program for the next year and that she has already had “some great conversations” with community groups and charitable organizations. The group's website accepts donations.

“I know that the program means so much to so many families,” she said. “We are so hopeful.”