Onondaga County delivers 2 millionth free book through Imagination Library

The 2 millionth free book from Onondaga County’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library marked more than a ceremonial handoff. It showed how a program that began on Syracuse’s North Side has become a countywide early-literacy safety net for families with children from birth to age 5.

County Executive Ryan McMahon celebrated the milestone as the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County continues to mail about 16,000 age-appropriate books every month. The books go directly to children’s homes at no cost to families, a small but steady intervention that advocates say helps build reading habits before kindergarten and gives parents a way to keep books in the home even when buying them is a stretch.

The new milestone came about 2.5 years after the county marked its 1.5 millionth book in November 2023, when 5-year-old Rocco Cestaro of Clay received the honor at the Northern Onondaga Public Library’s North Syracuse library. That earlier celebration reflected the same local pattern that has defined the program for years: a service that started in a few Syracuse ZIP codes and spread outward as demand and community support grew.

Virginia Carmody, the founding executive director of the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County, brought the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to Central New York in May 2010. The county expanded the effort countywide in 2015 after it began as a smaller Syracuse-area initiative. Carmody died on Jan. 14, 2026, leaving behind a program that now reaches far beyond its original North Side footprint.

The coalition says every Onondaga County child from birth through age 5 is eligible, regardless of income. Parents and guardians can enroll online through the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County or call program director Kim Kemp at 315-706-6924. Books typically begin arriving eight to 10 weeks after registration and continue until a child turns 5 or a family moves out of the county.

That expansion matters most in neighborhoods where book access and school readiness have long lagged. Local reporting on the program has cited research showing kindergarten readiness in Syracuse improved by 30 percent, and earlier coverage noted that about 6,000 Syracuse children were already receiving monthly books before the countywide rollout. In one North Side census tract, more than 60 percent of eligible children were enrolled even as only about 25 percent of children were considered ready for kindergarten, a gap that helped fuel support for broader reach.

Two million books later, the program remains less about a milestone than about repetition: one book, one month, one more child getting a start before school begins.