When Dolly Parton died Tuesday, her family asked for something other than flowers in her memory. Instead, they requested donations to Parton’s Imagination Library.
Though Parton was known around the world as an icon of music and movies, her beloved literacy program cemented her legacy as a humanitarian.
How Imagination Library started
Parton founded Imagination Library in 1995 to encourage a love for reading and learning among the children of Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was raised. She famously dedicated Imagination Library to her father, who grew up in rural poverty and never attended school.
“Daddy was a really smart man … but he was ashamed that he couldn’t read and write,” Parton told Oprah in 2020, “That always bothered me that he felt like he couldn’t learn after he was grown. I remember thinking, ‘I need to do something about that. I can. I’m in a position now where I can do something.'”
What Imagination Library does
Parton asked her father to help with the initiative, which delivers free, age-appropriate books to children every month from birth to age 5.
By the time a child finishes the program, they’ve received 60 books, according to Imagination Library.
The Dollywood Foundation covers some costs and negotiates book pricing. Its local partners help pay for mailing costs and the books themselves. Families that participate in Imagination Library pay nothing.
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The Imagination Library says it has registered 3.2 million to participate in the program and given away 332 million books since its founding. Imagination Library now operates throughout the U.S, as well as in Canada, Australia, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
In 2018, Parton donated her 100 millionth book to the U.S. Library of Congress.
Upon Parton’s passing, the Dollywood Foundation said in a statement that her legacy will continue “when a child opens a book addressed especially to them; when a parent and child read a favorite story together; and when a young person begins to imagine a future bigger than the circumstances into which they were born.”
How you can support Imagination Library
The Imagination Library accepts online donations via its website.
The program posted on Instagram that it would steadfastly continue its work.
“For decades, Dolly and the team at The Dollywood Foundation — home of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library — worked to build something that would last for generations. So it will,” the post said.
In her 2020 conversation with Oprah, Parton said that her father got to see the Imagination Library’s success before he died in 2000.
“My daddy got to live long enough to see that doing really well,” she said. “So I just always know he’s up there somewhere thinking, ‘You go, girl. You done good.'”
