For many children, Dolly Parton was the 'Book Lady'

To 9-year-old Zenaida, it wasn't Dolly Parton's storied country music career that made her so great.

It's the entertainment icon's beloved Imagination Library book donation program that has had the biggest impact on the young girl's life.

"These are the first books I learned how to read," Zenaida told Agence France-Presse (AFP) late Wednesday, flipping through Parton's "Coat of Many Colors" children's book at a makeshift memorial in the singer-songwriter's hometown at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Parton's extraordinarily successful book project was borne of personal anguish: Her own father grew up illiterate in rural Tennessee.

But thanks to the Imagination Library, millions of children like Zenaida in the United States and around the world have received a literacy boost from Parton herself: books that arrive by mail, for free, from birth until age 5.