Dolly Parton's father grew up poor and never got the chance to learn to read. For decades, the 78-year-old country music legend has made it her mission over the past three decades to improve literacy through her Imagination Library book giveaway program. It has expanded statewide in places like Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where all children under age 5 can enroll to have books mailed to their homes monthly, the AP reports. To celebrate, she made stops Tuesday in both states to promote the program and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
"In the mountains, a lot of people never had a chance to go to school because they had to work on the farms," she said at the Folly Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. "They had to do whatever it took to keep the rest of the family going." 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. And so she decided to help other kids, initially rolling out the program in a single county in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. It spread quickly from there, and today over 3 million books are sent out each month. Since the program started, books have been sent to more than 240 million to kids in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia.
Missouri covers the full cost of the program, which totaled $11 million in the latest fiscal year. Most of the other states chip in through a cost-sharing model. "The kids started calling me the 'book lady,'" Parton said. "And Daddy was more proud of that than he was that I was a star. But Daddy got to feeling like he had really done something great as well." The Imagination Library reaches children in all 120 Kentucky counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said at an event Tuesday with Parton. More than 120,000 children—nearly half of all preschoolers in the state—are enrolled. Parton said she wants to see the program in every state. While there is a presence in all of them, 21 have legislation ensuring all kids under 5 can enroll.
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