Dolly Parton Explained How the Imagination Library Is About More Than Teaching Children to Read: ‘They Feel Special’
According to Dolly Parton, her charitable Imagination Library project is doing more than helping children learn how to read. She’s proud to participate in something that allows kids worldwide access to books and helps promote reading, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Parton explained how her father was the inspiration behind her work, how else the program is helping besides promoting early reading, and why the project means so much to her.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has given away more than 150 million books worldwide
In an interview with the Associated Press, Parton explained how she started the Imagination Library because the cause was personal to her. “… My father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling that could be,” she shared.
She said her dad was a brilliant man, but she “often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write.”
As a result, her father inspired her to start the Imagination Library. And as of 2021, the program had gifted over 150 million books worldwide to children under 5, per the website. Furthermore, California just joined so that millions more kids will benefit.
“That is a big deal,” Parton told AP. “That’s a lot of children. And we’re so honored and proud to have all the communities that make that happen …”
“I get a lot of glory for the work a whole lot of people are doing,” she noted.
Dolly Parton said her Imagination Library makes children feel special
According to Parton, there’s more than one benefit for the children in the Imagination Library program. “It’s more [than] about children learning to read,” she told Vogue, “it’s the fact they get recognized.”
She added, “They get this little book with their little name on it in the mail, and they feel special. They start taking pride in themselves, and they know that somebody out there is thinking of [them].”
Some kids call the famous singer-songwriter the “book lady,” while others are spreading the word about the country music icon’s charity. “Dolly Parton sent me the books,” one recipient told PBS News Hour.
Dolly Parton said it’s not hard to take pride in her work for children with the Imagination Library
Parton explained how getting recognition for philanthropy isn’t the reason she does it, but she’s glad for how the exposure can help good causes. She told Vogue “it means a lot to [her]” to do the work.
She asked, “How hard can it be for me to take pride in the Imagination Library, knowing that I’m helping put books in the hands of children all over the world?”
“We’ve done so many wonderful things through the Imagination Library,” she explained, adding the project has “done great things for children in their young, impressionable years so that they can learn to read and write.”
