Missouri has cut funding for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library from $6 million to $2 million, and the state will stop accepting new applicants on July 1. The change means children under 6 who have not already enrolled will no longer be able to join the book program once the month begins.
As of the end of March, 169,032 Missouri children were getting a free book every month through the program, about 42% of the state’s children under age 6. That reach made the cut more than a budget line: it drew a hard boundary around who can still get in, and when.
Imagination Library is the book-gifting program founded by Dolly Parton, and Missouri was the first state to fully fund it. Former Gov. Mike Parson appeared with Parton on stage in 2024 to praise the program’s success, a public reminder that the initiative had once been held up as a model of state support for early literacy.
Rep. Aaron Crossley said the reduction slipped through because lawmakers were staring at too many other cuts at once. “Any other year, this would have been kind of a political volleyball that was tossed around and put in the news, but because there were just so many other cuts being proposed, I think this one unfortunately got lost,” he said. That warning landed in a session where lawmakers talked up early childhood and children’s literacy even as the final budget moved money elsewhere.
Rep. Patti Mansur put the disconnect more bluntly, saying the funding picture at the end of the session did not match what legislators were told at the start. She pointed to the Missouri Scholars Program, which received a $10 million increase in this year’s budget, and to the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Fund, which has a dedicated $60 million of general revenue. Her comments captured the broader frustration: the state can find new money for some priorities, but not for the book program that had been reaching families across Missouri.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said it will keep sending books to children already enrolled as long as funding lasts. That leaves the immediate question not about whether the program survives today, but how long the reduced appropriation can sustain the children already in line — and how many of them will make it through before the money runs down.
The cut also lands against a tighter budget backdrop. Missouri has been spending more than it takes in, and the state’s COVID-era federal aid has nearly disappeared since 2023. This year’s budget debate also included proposed reductions affecting people with developmental disabilities and domestic violence survivors, underscoring how crowded the fight for state dollars became before the book program lost most of its funding.
