Dolly Parton’s father grew up poor and never had the chance to learn to read.
Inspired by her upbringing, the 78-year-old country music legend For thirty years, Imagination Library has been dedicated to improving literacy through its book distribution program. The program has expanded statewide, including in Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where all children under age 5 can sign up to receive books mailed to their homes each month.
To celebrate, she made stops in both states on Tuesday to promote the show and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, a lot of people didn’t have a chance to go to school because they had to work on the farms,” she told the Folly Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. “They had to do whatever they could to support the rest of the family.”
Parton, the fourth of 12 children from a poor Appalachian family, said her father was “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known,” but he was embarrassed that he couldn’t read.
So she decided to help other children, launching the program in just one county in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. The program quickly spread, and today, more than 3 million books are sent each month. Since the program began, books have been sent to more than 240 million children in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.
Missouri pays the full cost of the program, which totaled $11 million last fiscal year. Most other states participate in the program through a cost-sharing model.
“The kids started calling me the ‘book lady,'” Parton says. “And Dad was more proud of that than of me becoming a star. But Dad felt like he’d done something really great, too.”
In Kentucky, the Imagination Library reaches children in all 120 counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said at an event Tuesday with Parton. More than 120,000 Kentucky children, or nearly half of all preschoolers in the state, are currently registered to receive books through the program, first lady Britainy Beshear said.
It encourages families to read together and allows children to have their own personal library before they start kindergarten, at no cost to their families, the first lady said.
“It’s really a great way to teach kids, from a young age, to love books and learn to read,” Parton said at the event in Lexington, Kentucky.
Parton, who won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award a decade ago, said she wants to see the program rolled out in every state. While it is in all of those states, 21 have passed laws that ensure all children under 5 can enroll. She said she is proud that her father lived long enough to see the program take off.
“It was kind of my way of honoring my father, because the Bible says to honor your father and mother,” she said. “And I don’t think that means just obeying. I think it means honoring their name and honoring them.”
Parton is herself an author whose titles include the 1996 children’s book “Coat of Many Colors,” which is part of the book gift program.
As she prepared to sing her famous song of the same name, she explained that it was a coat her mother had made for her from a patchwork of mismatched fabrics, because the family was too poor to afford a large piece of one fabric. Parton was proud of it because her mother compared it to the multi-colored coat spoken of in the Bible—a fantastic gift from Jacob to his son Joseph.
Her classmates made fun of her. For years, she said the experience was a “very deep wound.”
She said that in writing and performing the song, “the pain left me.” Over the years, she has received letters from people saying it did the same to them.
“The fact,” she explained, “that this little song has meant so much, not only to me, but to so many other people, for so many different reasons, makes it my favorite song.”
Asked in Kentucky about her lasting legacy, Parton said she would like to be remembered as a “good ol’ girl” who worked hard and tried to make people happy and the world a better place.
“Of course I want to be known as a songwriter and singer, but I can honestly say that the Imagination Library has meant as much, if not more, to me than almost anything I’ve ever done,” she said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky.
