Dolly Parton’s father grew up poor and never had the opportunity to learn to read.
Inspired by her upbringing, 78-Year-Old Country Music Legend For the past three decades, she has made it her mission to improve literacy through the Imagination Library book distribution program. The program has expanded statewide to places like Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where all children under the age of five can sign up to have books mailed to their homes monthly.
To celebrate the event, she visited both states on Tuesday to promote the program and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Barton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, a lot of people didn’t have the opportunity to go to school because they had to work on farms. They had to do whatever it took to support the rest of the family,” she said at the Foley Theater in Kansas City, Missouri.
Barton, the fourth of 12 children from a poor family in Appalachia, said her father was “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known,” but was embarrassed because he couldn’t read.
So she decided to help other children, and started the program in one county in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. The program quickly spread from there, and today more than 3 million books are sent each month. Since the program began, books have been sent to more than 240 million children in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia.
Missouri pays the full cost of the program, which totaled $11 million in the last fiscal year. Most other states contribute money through a cost-sharing model.
“The kids started calling me ‘the book lady,’ and my dad was more proud of that than he was of me being a star,” Parton said. “But my dad started feeling like he had done a really great job, too.”
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said at an event with Parton Tuesday that the Imagination Library reaches children in all 120 counties. First Lady Brittany Beshear said more than 120,000 Kentucky children — nearly half of all preschoolers in the state — are currently enrolled to receive books through the program.
The first lady said the program encourages families to read together, and allows children to have their own personal library before they start kindergarten, at no cost to their families.
“It’s a really great way to teach kids when they’re very young to learn to love books and learn to read,” Parton said at the event in Lexington, Kentucky.
Parton, who received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award a decade ago, said she eventually wants to see the program in every state. While the program exists in every state, 21 states have legislation that ensures all children under 5 are enrolled. She said she is proud that her father lived long enough to see the program take off.
“This was my way of honoring my parents, because the Bible says, ‘Respect your father and your mother,’” she said. “And I don’t think that just means, ‘Obey,’ I think it means honor their name and honor them.”
Barton is an author herself, and among her titles is the 1996 children’s book Coat of Many Colors, which is part of the book distribution program.
As she prepared to sing her hit song of the same name, she explained that it was a coat her mother had made for her from a patchwork of mismatched fabrics, because the family was too poor to afford a large piece of one cloth. Parton was proud of it because her mother likened it to the multicolored coat of the Bible—a wonderful gift from Jacob to his son Joseph.
But her classmates made fun of her. For years, she said the experience was “very painful.”
She said writing and performing the song “took the pain away from me.” Over the years, she has received messages from people telling her the song did the same for them.
“The truth is, this little song means so much not just to me, but to so many other people for so many different reasons, and that’s what makes it my favorite song,” she explained.
When asked in Kentucky about her lasting legacy, Parton said she wanted people to remember her as a “good girl” who worked hard and tried to make people happy and make the world a better place.
“Of course I want to be known as a songwriter and singer, but I can honestly say that Imagination Library means as much, if not more, to me than almost anything I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky.