Dolly Parton spent her life telling stories through songs, but one of her most enduring legacies may be the millions of stories she put in the hands of children.The country music icon, who died Tuesday at 80, founded her Imagination Library more than three decades ago with a mission to give young children books of their own and encourage them to read.What began in 1995 as a literacy program serving children in Parton’s home county in east Tennessee has since grown into an international operation that mails more than 3 million books each month to children from birth to age 5.
The program sends participating children an age-appropriate book each month at no cost to their families. It operates through Parton’s Dollywood Foundation and in partnership with local organizations and governments that help fund and administer the program.The idea was deeply personal for Parton.Parton started the program as an ode to her father, Robert Lee Parton, who never learned to read growing up in the mountains of the Volunteer State. When visiting the Library of Congress to celebrate the program in 2018, Parton said her father’s illiteracy was a challenge for him.“Daddy thought it was just something he couldn’t learn after he was grown, so he never tried to learn to read and write,” she said. “And that was just kind of embarrassing to him. But I didn’t want Daddy to feel embarrassed.”Singer-songwriter Dolly Parton reads her book “Coat of Many Colors” to children as she makes it the 100 millionth book that Imagination Library donates to the Library of Congress collection at the Library of Congress, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
