Yap milestone carries forward Dolly Parton’s worldwide literacy legacy
Habele Young Island Readers
September 3, 2026
Yap, FSM – Habele’s Young Island Readers has sent its 30,000th book directly to a child in Yap State, marking a major milestone for the early-literacy program operated in partnership with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Through Young Island Readers, children across Yap State can receive a new, age-appropriate book every month, free to their families, from birth until their fifth birthday. Each package is addressed to the child. Over five years, the monthly deliveries can become a personal home library of 60 books before the child begins kindergarten.
“Thirty thousand is an exciting number, but each one of those books is personal,” said Neil Mellen, Habele’s founder. “It arrives bearing a child’s own name and creates another opportunity for a parent, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent or older sibling to read with them. That is how books and reading become part of family life.”
Young Island Readers began on Yap Proper in 2020 following encouragement from Yap early-childhood educator and mother Stella H. Talgumai to put books directly into young children’s homes. The program expanded to Yap’s Outer Islands in 2022.
Today, the books reach families in ways suited to each island. Deliveries go to family post office boxes on Yap Proper, by plane to Ulithi, Fais and Woleai, and through ship mailbags to other Outer Islands. The program’s growth has depended on Yap families, educators, students, health workers and delivery partners, along with the individual donors who fund the books.
The milestone comes as readers around the world mourn Dolly Parton, who died August 25 at age 80. Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995, inspired by her father, who never had the opportunity to learn to read and write. Her simple idea—that young children should have books of their own—grew from one county in Tennessee into an international literacy program that has gifted more than 300 million books and now mails more than three million each month.
In announcing her death, Parton’s family invited those wishing to honor her to support the Imagination Library.
“Dolly Parton understood that literacy begins long before the first day of school, and that putting a book into a child’s hands can open a lifetime of possibility,” Mellen said. “We are proud to carry her vision forward across Yap State. The 30,000th book is both a celebration of what Yap’s families have accomplished and a promise to keep turning pages together.”
Parents and guardians of children under five in Yap State can enroll at www.habele.org/read. To learn more about Young Island Readers—or help make the next 30,000 books possible—visit www.habele.org/YIR.
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