Turning Pages: Inside Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Stephen L. Betts © Courtesy of Dolly Parton s Imagination Library
Dolly Parton is many things to so many people: singer-songwriter, actress, humorist, icon. But to nearly 2 million kids around the world, she’s their librarian.
Since 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program has delivered meticulously chosen, personalized, age-appropriate books every month to children up to five years old all free of charge.
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Parton’s charitable endeavor, first launched in her native Sevier County, in the foothills of Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains, was inspired by her hardworking, wise, yet functionally illiterate father. The program is the cornerstone of Parton’s Dollywood Foundation, which she started in 1988, initially with the aim of encouraging students to stay in school and offering scholarships and financial incentives for them upon graduation. The foundation’s ef
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All 88 counties on board for Imagination Library
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My Imagination Library team has been working hard really hard. We have affiliates all over the state and we have been working to make sure there is an affiliate in each county so that every single child in Ohio, from birth to 5 years old, could receive the wonderful Dolly Parton Imagination Library books in the mail every single month.
Finally, yesterday, we made the final breakthrough of the last two counties to get on board! We are so excited!
My idea started when I visited the Greene County Library in 2018 while I was campaigning through Ohio. My grandkids in Greene County had been receiving the Dolly Parton Imagination Library books in the mail each month, and I saw their excitement and joy when their book arrived, addressed to them. After talking to Karl Colón, head of the Greene County Library, about their program which they have had for many years, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if every young ch
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