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. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
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.
London mother-of-two Harriet Anscombe said her four-year-old daughter has been receiving Imagination Library books since she was three months old. "It just blows my mind that it's readily available for every family that lives in my borough," she said. 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.
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."