Dolly Parton, Beloved Backer of Books, Dies at 80
Dolly Parton, the musician whose philanthropy made her one of the most visible champions of childhood reading, died this morning at 80. Her Imagination Library has given away hundreds of millions of books, and her literary legacy now faces the question of how it will be sustained.
Dolly Parton died this morning at the age of 80, according to Book Riot’s report, and readers are mourning not only a music icon but one of the most influential patrons of the literary arts in recent memory. Parton’s public image was inseparable from her songs and stage presence, but her long-running commitment to books shaped childhood reading far beyond the country-music world.
A massive book giveaway
The centerpiece of that legacy is Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which she launched in 1995. The program has now provided more than three million children with more than 332 million free books, an extraordinary scale for a privately inspired literacy effort. Roughly one in six U.S. children under five are enrolled in the program, which also operates in Canada, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and Australia.
That reach matters because the Imagination Library has been built around a simple idea: that regular access to books can help children become readers before they ever enter a classroom in earnest. Book Riot noted that the program is widely understood as both generous and research-backed, a combination that helped make it one of the most recognizable literacy initiatives associated with any celebrity.