NEW HAVEN — More than 300 local children already have taken advantage of a new literacy program in Mason County.

But that means there are more than 1,000 children in the county who haven’t, and local library officials are hoping more will sign up for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library during a second kickoff event this weekend in New Haven.

According to Pam Thompson, director of the Mason County Library System, children up to the age of 5 are eligible to sign up for the program, which provides them with one free, hardbound book each month until their fifth birthday.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 320 children had signed up, and she said the library gets calls on a daily basis from parents requesting information about the new program, which is open to every child in the county under the age of 5 regardless of their family’s income or the number of children living in the household. If parents register their children at birth, the child will have his or her own personal library of 60 books by the time he or she turns 5 years old.

“We haven’t seen this much excitement about (a library program) in a long time,” Thompson added.

Thompson said Saturday’s kickoff will take place noon-4 p.m. at the New Haven Community Building and will include games, free food and entertainment for the entire family, much like last month’s kickoff at the National Guard armory.

She added that the program’s goal is to register 1,000 of the estimated 1,500 children who are eligible in Mason County, but local officials want to register every child under the age of 5. In addition, she said the program’s goal was to have 20 percent of the local children registered in the first year, and Mason County already has surpassed that goal.

Earlier this year, the library system joined with WIC and the Mason County Board of Education and parent coordinators as well as the state of West Virginia and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to provide hardbound children’s books to all children in the county under the age of 5. The books are free and will be mailed to the children at their homes once a month. Mason County is the seventh in West Virginia to implement the program.

According to its Web site, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library was launched in 1996 by its namesake, who wanted to start a program to benefit the children of her home county in east Tennessee by fostering a love of reading among the county’s preschool children and their families. She wanted children to be excited about books and to feel the magic that books can create. Moreover, she wanted to ensure that every child would have books regardless of the family’s income.

So Parton decided to mail a brand new, age-appropriate book each month to every child under 5 in Sevier County. With the arrival of every child’s first book, the classic “The Little Engine That Could,” the child could experience the joy of finding his or her very own book in the mail box. These moments continued each month until the child turned 5, and in their very last month in the program they received “Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come.”

The program was such a success that other communities clamored to provide the Imagination Library to their children, and Parton finally decided that her foundation should develop a way for other communities to participate. The foundation asked a blue-ribbon panel of experts to select the books and secured Penguin Group USA to be the exclusive publisher for the Imagination Library.

A third kickoff event is planned for March 28 in Ashton. In addition, children may be registered anytime at any of the four library branches, the WIC office or with the parent coordinators at the local elementary schools.

For more information about the program or this weekend’s kickoff event, call any of the local library branches.