What Dolly Parton Knew About Reading

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My best friend’s baby got mail from Dolly Parton on the day the singer died.

This wasn’t unexpected: He’s been receiving books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library for all 10 months of his life. (This month’s selection was Bedtime, Here I Come , by D.

J.

Steinberg.) And he wasn’t alone—the Imagination Library sends free books to children every month from birth to age 5; the program has passed out more than 300 million books in five countries.

My colleague Annie Joy Williams wrote earlier this week about the legacy of Parton —and her books program—in Tennessee, the home state that all three of us share.

But the Imagination Library has expanded far beyond that territory.

When I lived in an apartment building in Washington, D.C., I would see books bearing the library’s distinctive seal on a table in the lobby—volumes too big for my neighbor’s mailbox, quietly awaiting little hands.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic ’s Books section: Portrait of the artist as a movie star “Tallying,” a poem by Joanna Klink “Wilderness Years,” a poem by Dave Lucas The progress that can’t be erased Stories about Parton’s generosity are spreading widely: She helped fund a COVID-19 vaccine and filmed herself getting the shot when many Americans were hesitant.

She opened a sanctuary for bald eagles! She did so many things for so many kinds of Americans, and especially Tennesseans, that I find it hard to keep track.

But she said, many times, that she’d be happy to be remembered not as a generational talent or a dolled-up diva but as “the book lady.” Parton grew up in poverty in East Tennessee, and she frequently cited her illiterate father as the inspiration for her books program, which she founded in 1995.

I don’t know whether all of Parton’s fans knew how high she ranked literacy on her list of important causes, but when I watched tributes to Parton roll in this week, I noted that people I’d grown up with in Tennessee (mostly young women like me) kept posting the same tableaus on Instagram: photos of babies and kids sitting with their parents, reading a book they’d gotten from the Imagination Library.

The photos are cute—but they also reflect something deeply important.