She started the Imagination Library for one reason: her own father never learned to read or write. Every month for 30 years, a brand-new book showed up in the mail addressed to a child by name, free, until they turned 5.
Dolly Parton built the program as a tribute to her father, a tenant farmer who couldn’t read. She said that before he died in 2000, he told her the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing she’d ever done.
It started in 1995 in her home county in Tennessee, mailing books to about 1,700 kids. The model never changed: one hardcover picture book a month, addressed to the child by name, from birth to age 5, at no cost to the family. A kid enrolled from birth ends up with a personal library of around 60 books.
By the mid-2020s it had spread to five countries, and roughly 1 in 7 American children under 5 were getting a book in the mail every month. More than 3.5 million books go out every month, and the cumulative total passed 325 million this year. Parton often said fostering a love of reading was the achievement she was proudest of, ranking it above her music.
Parton died Tuesday in Nashville at 80. She’s survived by six of her siblings.
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