E3: Elevate Early Education

What an impactful day! Hundreds of children and families visited Met Park at Amazon’s HQ2 to listen to Goodnight, Numbers read aloud by actress and NYT bestselling author Danica McKellar.

Families enjoyed free Toby’s ice cream, crafts, books and bookmarks.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library of NoVA joined us to get everyone excited about the program coming to the area.

Over 1,000 Imagination Library book titles were put in the hands of children and families.
Thank you to our sponsors who made this special day happen:

Amazon.com
Claude Moore Charitable Foundation
Lara Major
Capitol Square Strategies
QTS
Gil Minor Innovation & Impact Fund
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Northern Virginia

When you sit down to read together, challenge your children to use the pictures to tell their own, new story! This is a great tool for developing their imagination and helping them understand how to use language to bring their own ideas to life.

The new data released by the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project shows that students are performing worse than their peers 10 years ago. Reading scores are down in 83% of school districts. Math scores were down 70%. The declines have affected all ethnicities, zip codes, and wealthy and poor school divisions.

This is a huge problem in our country. This is the first national comparison of school divisions through 2025.

Experts are saying four things that have impacted the scores:
• The rise of social media, laptops, and phones
• A lack of federal accountability
• Accelerated learning declines after the pandemic
• Student absenteeism

Read more: https://brnw.ch/21x2QzM

This is community investment + impact. Amazon.com, E3: Elevate Early Education + Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Northern Virginia came together to raise awareness and ignite a love of books, reading and math in our children at HQ2.

Actress and NYT bestselling author Danica McKellar gave a BookTalk, read Goodnight, Numbers aloud to hundreds of children and families and shared her passion for reading and math.

This special book was part of the Imagination Library for six years.

Families received free books, Toby’s ice cream and Amazon’s famous bananas from a Banista.

Together, we unveiled the Amazon Little Library stocked with free books from the Imagination Library book list at Met Park.

Amazon started as an online bookstore and that legacy continues with the Amazon Little Library.

Amazon and E3: Elevate Early Education have teamed up to expand access to books for children throughout Virginia.

Families learned all about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and how to enroll to receive books in the mail for their children birth to five.

Thank you to all of our partners who made this day happen.

Thank you to ChainBreakers, Inc. and everyone who helped bring Dolly Parton's Imagination Library to Portsmouth. 💙

Together, we’re putting more books into the hands and homes of children across Portsmouth, building stronger readers and brighter futures one story at a time.

Portsmouth Unveils New Dolly Parton Imagination Library Portsmouth launches new library program to increase local children’s access to high-quality books.

Join us for a Community Book Fair on Saturday, May 16th from 10am-12pm @ MET PARK. E3, Amazon.com, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library of Northern Virginia, the Read, Virginia campaign, and other partners are coming together to raise awareness and ignite a love of books, reading, and math in our children.

Danica McKellar, actress and NYT bestselling author of children’s math books will be with us to read Goodnight, Numbers aloud. This special book was part of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Danica is a summa cm laude graduate of UCLA with a degree in mathematics. She is well-known for her roles on The Wonder Years and The West Wing.

When you point to words on the page as you read aloud together, it helps children begin to connect spoken and written words. It also teaches how we "use" books by demonstrating that we read from top to bottom and from left to right.

Reading aloud for just 15 minutes a day makes a BIG difference in early literacy skills. Grab your favorite book, and get started!

Reading together for at least 15 minutes every day builds the language + literacy pathways in your baby’s brain 🧠 Cuddle up together and help to inspire a love of reading and learning in your children.