One child in Denver called her “The Book Queen”.
Another in Alabama calls her “Ms Dolly”.
Across the globe in Australia, a toddler with speech delays delighted her family with her first word – “orange” – after she and her twin sister received a free book in the post about colours. It came from Imagination Library, the literacy programme begun by late global superstar Dolly Parton.
Parton, who died this week aged 80, launched the philanthropic effort in 1995 to honour her father – whose difficult Appalachian upbringing never allowed him to finish school or learn to read and write.
“He was the smartest man I have ever known, but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams,” wrote Parton in an open letter on Imagination Library’s website.
“Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission.”
Imagination Library sends one free book a month to children from birth to age five. It first launched in Tennessee’s Sevier County, where Parton grew up, before expanding across the US in 2000. The programme, which partners with local organisations, launched in Canada in 2006, the UK the following year, then Australia in 2013 and Ireland in 2019.
By 2025, as Imagination Library celebrated its 30th anniversary, it had distributed more than 300m books – equating to one book mailed every 78 seconds, according to the organisation.
And for the families in receipt of the storybooks, the impact has been invaluable.
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“It just blows my mind that it’s readily available for every family that lives in my borough,” said London mother-of-two Harriet Anscombe, whose four-year-old daughter has been receiving Imagination Library books since she was three months old.
The free books helped Anscombe establish a reading-focused nighttime routine.
“I think that, if I didn’t get those books, maybe I wouldn’t have started doing bedtime stories till she was two – but because we were getting them so early, it embedded story time into our routine from when she was just a couple of months old,” Anscombe said. “She probably doesn’t remember a time when we weren’t reading stories.”
Imagination Library became part of the family routine for Ciara Fernandez Faber, too, after she signed up her son about eight years ago in Colorado. His favourite book for years was one written by Parton herself: I Am A Rainbow.
“We read it almost every night, and I never got tired of reading it to him,” said Faber, 42.
“It’s a book about different emotions, and so we would act out the different emotions, the different faces,” she said. “At the back of the book, there’s a little excerpt by Dolly talking about how everybody has a rainbow of feelings, and we would read that – and he would always point to her picture and say, ‘There’s the Book Queen.'”
Families like Faber’s repeatedly remarked on how well curated the books were – detailing how topics helped their children not just with reading, but also with social and emotional development.
“There were themes that were addressed in a lot of the books that would have really helped us navigate issues,” said Helen Cashell, of Dublin, Ireland.
She signed up both of her children, now aged seven and five, for the scheme. “Whether it was same-sex families or just different types of families, things about bravery, courage, bullying, things about different identities.”
Author Selina Brown, whose book My Rice Is Best was selected for distribution through Imagination Library, noted how the plotline features a black protagonist.
The programme also helps promote authors like herself; because of the selection, it “means 14,000 copies of my book have been sent to children in the UK”.
“To choose between gas, electric, food or a book, you’re going to choose a core need – but with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, you don’t have to do that,” she said.
In inner-city Sydney, Australia, first-time mum Paige Stewart was astounded as she watched her children’s progress with the programme.
Her twin girls, now four, “had a speech delay and some learning difficulties” – but Stewart noticed a change after just the second book.
“Not only did they learn their colours from that book… it kind of set the tone for them speaking and their joy for books.”
She’s become a vocal advocate for the programme, telling others: “It’s so helpful, honestly.”
Alabama grandmother Kristina Hadley also promotes the programme to friends and family – even incorporating Imagination Library into baby gifts.
“I’ll pull up the Imagination books website, and I’ll print that, and I’ll put it in a picture frame, and I’ll get little newborn books and stuff like that, and I’ll put it with that for like a suggestion for new mothers,” said Hadley, 53.
She signed up her nearly three-year-old granddaughter, Eillie Elaine, “before she was actually born”. Now the child has her own bookshelf in their shared household – “and one whole shelf is for her Dolly books”.
“She likes to go to go to the mailbox, and she’s like, ‘Ms Dolly! Ms Dolly!’ and I’m like, ‘Well, let’s go see if Ms Dolly sent you a book!'”
A lifelong Parton fan, Hadley chokes up while detailing how she was at work when a friend texted to say the singer had died.
Imagination Library, she says, “is going to keep her memory going with the younger generation, and I hope and I pray that this is something that goes on for years and years and years.”
It’s a legacy that Parton built quietly in the background as she presided over pop culture for more than six decades.
“The biggest thing that I like is the fact that she didn’t do anything for recognition,” said Geoff Blacklin, 67, of Manitoba, Canada.
He and his wife signed up their grandchildren for Imagination Library after a local doctor brought the programme to their region.
“She gave families more than books,” Blacklin said. “She gave children a love of reading, precious moments with loved ones, and opportunities to learn and dream.”
Such family stories and gratitude would undoubtedly have been music to Parton’s ears; the expansion of the programme was truly a realisation of her own dream.
“In the beginning, my hope was simply to inspire the children in my home county, but here we are today with a worldwide programme that gives a book a month to well over 3 million children,” she wrote on the Imagination Library site – also taking care to thank the partners “who have embraced my dream and made it their own”.
At the centre of it, always, was her love for children – and her love for her father.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done,” Parton wrote.
“I can’t tell you how much that meant to me, because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy.”
Credit: BBC
