Dolly Parton's father grew up poor and never had the opportunity to learn to read.
Inspired by his childhood experiences, the 78-year-old country music legend has made it his mission for the past 30 years to promote literacy through his Imagination Library book distribution program, which has expanded across states such as Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where every child under the age of 5 can sign up to have a book mailed to their home each month.
To mark the occasion, she made stops in both states on Tuesday to promote the show and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, a lot of people didn't have a chance to go to school because they had to work on the farm,” she told the Folly Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. “They had to do whatever they could to provide for their families.”
The fourth of 12 children in a poor Appalachian family, Parton said her father was “one of the smartest people I know,” but that she was embarrassed by her illiteracy.
So she decided to help other kids, and first rolled out the program in one county in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. The program grew rapidly from there, and now distributes more than 3 million books every month. Since the program's inception, books have been distributed to more than 240 million children in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia.
Missouri pays for the entire cost of the program, totaling $11 million in the most recent fiscal year, while most other states fund it through a cost-sharing model.
“They started calling me 'The Book Lady,'” Parton says, “and my dad was more proud of that than he was of me being a star, but he also felt like he'd done something really amazing.”
In Kentucky, Imagination Libraries are reaching children in all 120 counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said at an event with Governor Parton on Tuesday. First Lady Brittany Beshear said more than 120,000 Kentucky children are now signed up to receive books through the program, nearly half of the state's preschoolers.
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.
“This is a really great way to teach young children to love books and to learn to read,” Parton said during the event in Lexington, Kentucky.
Parton, who received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 10 years ago, said she hopes the program will eventually be implemented in every state. Every state has one, but 21 have laws requiring all children under the age of 5 to participate. She said she is proud that her father lived long enough to see the program take off.
“The Bible says to honor your father and your mother, so that was my way of honoring my father,” she said, “and I don't think that means just 'obey,' I think it means bringing honor to the name of my father and mother.”
Parton is also an author, having written the 1996 children's book “Coat of Many Colors,” which is included in the book giveaway program.
As she prepared to sing her famous song of the same title, she explained that the song was about a coat her mother made for her out of mismatched pieces of fabric because her family was too poor to afford a single large scrap of fabric. Parton is proud that her mother likened the coat to the biblical coat of many colors, the great gift Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
But her classmates laughed at her, and she said the experience “scarred her, deep, deep” for years.
She said writing and performing the song “helped me heal my heart,” and she has received letters over the years from people who say the song made them feel the same way.
“The fact that this little song means so much to me and so many other people for so many different reasons is what makes it my favorite song,” she explained.
Asked about her lasting legacy in Kentucky, Parton said she wants to be remembered as a “good old lady” who worked hard, made people happy and tried to make the world a better place.
“Obviously I want to be known as a songwriter and singer, but I can honestly say that Imagination Library means as much or more to me than pretty much anything else I've ever done,” she said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky.
