Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Given Over 300 Million Books to Children Under 5

Dollywood, the theme park that country music star Dolly Parton branded and co-owned, announced her death on Tuesday and encouraged fans to honor her memory with a gift to the “organization she was so deeply passionate about, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.”

The Imagination Library grew out of Parton’s work to improve education in her childhood home of Sevier County, Tennessee. It aims to boost childhood literacy by simply giving young children many more books.

The effort started with local book distribution in 1995. Its success convinced Parton and others to push the effort far beyond the county’s borders.

The program went statewide in 2004, and Tennesseans can order Imagination Library branded plates to help fund the program. It soon expanded to other states and nations as well.

By 2016, it was sending out 1 million books a month. By 2022, distribution had climbed to 2 million. By 2024, one in seven Americans under 5 were receiving monthly books by post.

Today, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has almost 3.2 million children registered to receive books, according to the organization’s website.

If they are signed up at birth, that means as many as 60 books received per child before the child “graduates” from the program by turning 5.

The Imagination Library has given out more than 332 million books to children in America, Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland over the life of the program, and would like to go further still.

“There is simply no limit on how far we can take this program and to what ends of the Earth, but it is an absolute impossibility without your help,” the Imagination Library website says.

Paying for Imagination

The books are free to children and their parents, but they still have to be licensed, printed and shipped. Through her Dollywood Foundation, Parton covered the initial funding for the program and picked up some costs on an ongoing basis.

However, the expansion of the program embraced a local partner funding model. The partners can be just about anyone or any organization, from charities to governments. The partners help to publicize the program and show parents of young children how to sign up for it. Partners also help raise the money to pay for it.

The costs on a per unit basis may not be high, about $2.60 on average per book shipped, but they add up.

Montana announced a statewide effort in 2023, led by the state’s current First Lady Susan Gianforte. It was not funded by state tax dollars, but rather through the Treasure State Foundation, a privately funded charity to promote educational efforts.

According to a local impact report for the Montana branch of the Imagination Library, 2025 saw the distribution of 328,080 books in state to 28,560 children at a cost that works out to about $850,000.

That distribution represented just under 50 percent of the eligible children in the state. Doubling the enrollment would likely double the cost to $1.7 million yearly.

Parton visited Montana to help stir up publicity for the statewide expansion. Upon learning of her death, the first lady and Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, said in a statement that Parton had left “an incredible mark on millions of families across the nation and right here in Montana.”

The state’s first couple said that Parton’s efforts on behalf of learning had “brought stories, joy, and opportunity into thousands of Montana homes.”

Keeping the Books Coming

Brooke Fisher-Clark, executive director of Imagination Library of Washington state, hosted the country music superstar when she came to Washington on a statewide Imagination Library celebration in 2023.

It was “an experience I will always treasure,” she told The Epoch Times on Tuesday.

Fisher-Clark said that Parton’s literacy promotion began to honor her own father, who was unschooled and functionally illiterate and thus had a hard time in the world. Parton’s early efforts “grew into an incredible early literacy movement that has reached millions of children.”

In her state of Washington, Fisher-Clark said that since the statewide program began in 2022, they’ve mailed out nearly 4.5 million books to children’s homes. It’s given “our youngest learners the opportunity to build their own home libraries and develop a love of reading from an early age,” she said.

A special Imagination Library committee decides if submitted books are age appropriate and worthy of wider distribution. Past selections include such works as “Cinderella—With Dogs!” and “Ocean Lullaby.”

“Cinderella—With Dogs!” is a send-up of the classic fairy tale by author Linda Bailey and illustrator Freya Hartas, in which the heroine gets a fairy dogmother rather than a fairy godmother and barking hilarity ensues.

“Ocean Lullaby,” with words by Laura McGee Kvasnosky, pictures by Kate Harvey McGee, and parallel Spanish translation by Eva Ibarzabal, belongs to the genre of books designed to ease children into sleep. The vehicle to do that is a lullaby about the creatures near the ocean shore.

It costs money to keep books like these coming to children in the mail. That hit a snag in Washington when the state legislature zeroed out its support for the Imagination Library because of budget shortfalls.

Imagination Library supporters of Washington had to scramble to line up private funds to fill some of that hole, and the effort is ongoing.

“This program truly takes a village,” Fisher-Clark said. “Our local program partners work incredibly hard to raise the funds needed to serve children in their communities, and continued public and private support is critical to keeping the program strong and accessible across Washington.”

She added, “Especially today, I hope people recognize how important it is for all of us to do our part to keep Dolly’s incredible legacy going for generations to come.”