Every year, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library serves millions of children. The program has given away over 200 million books since its start in 1995, including thousands sent to children in the Northwest.
Wanda Sexton, who lives in Lewiston, Idaho, signed up her great-granddaughter, Allaina, for the Imagination Library a few years ago.
“Mail would roll in for her, and she'd just get so tickled over it. And trying to explain to her who it was that was sending her these books — she had no real concept of who Dolly Parton was or anything,” Sexton said. “But she just flat-out decided that Dolly Parton must be her cousin, because she was the one sending her the books.”
She said the Imagination Library was instrumental in helping strengthen Allaina’s literacy.
“By the time she went to kindergarten last year, she was reading everything. And part of it is because she had access to these books,” Sexton said.
Kaysie Morris lives in Clarkston, Washington, and has three children. She signed the two youngest up for the Imagination Library about a year and a half ago. For her family, she said, reading together is an important bonding activity.
“With my youngest being deaf, it's (also) a good way to get all that vocabulary into her,” she said.
Lleshea Fuson, of Lewiston, reads stories from the Imagination Library to her two children, Cirilla and Saren.
“It was a very instrumental inclusion into our family dynamic,” she said. “ I remember as a kid always loving bedtime stories, and I wanted to pass that on to my children, and (Parton’s) Imagination Library has helped that.”
In Blaine, Washington, now 8-year-old Stella Allison received Braille books through the Imagination Library, said her mother, Kyley Gehringer.
“ It gave us that inclusion, and it was a chance for Stella to get things that all other kids could get. But it gave it to her in a way that she could read through Braille,” she said.
Stella loves Dolly so much, her parents said, that when the family encountered a cardboard cutout of the singer at a local fair, Stella made an exception to one of her normal rules:
“She hates standing still for pictures, but she said, ‘Yes, absolutely. I wanna get a picture with Dolly Parton,’” said stepdad Alex Gehringer.
Another Lewiston mom, Sara Alder, said books from the Imagination Library helped her connect with her son, Bjorn, who has autism and a speech delay.
“You can really see it in his eyes when he's flipping through the pages. He likes to bring the books really close to his face, and he'll point at things, and he'll ask what they are,” she said. “It just kind of provides a really nice calm interaction, especially when he's not able to articulate all that well how he's feeling about things.”
Some of those books have helped allow her son to communicate, she said. Sometimes Bjorn will use one of his books to communicate when he wants to go to the playground. Another, which talks about emotions, came with him when he went to preschool.
“He's been able to point to the different faces in the book and say ‘angry’ and ‘sad’ and ‘happy’ and ‘worried.’ And that's huge for him, to be able to articulate how he's feeling when he can't always put it into words,” Alder said.
Those books have also helped the family connect.
“He kind of wants to do his own thing,” she said. “But reading's always been that thing that's allowed us to have an activity we can do together.”
Bree Latimer, 26, is a graduate student studying computer science at the University of Louisville. She grew up in Cottonwood, Idaho, and received books from the Imagination Library.
She credits the Imagination Library and her parents for developing her love of reading and learning.
“ I actually struggled a lot with reading when I was a kid,” Latimer said. “I think the biggest thing for me was not necessarily that I was the best reader, but I still loved reading. And I don't think that I would have had that love for reading if it weren't for my parents reading those stories to me when I was a kid.”
The library’s future
In an interview with CBS News, Jeff Conyers, the Dollywood Foundation’s president, confirmed that the book program will continue in the wake of Parton’s death. The program is funded by both the foundation and local partners.
In Washington, the Imagination Library lost funding from the state this past legislative session. However, the JTMF Foundation and Roots & Wings Foundation have provided support to fill that gap.
“(Parton) is the core inspiration of the work that we do, and it means more to us now than ever to remain committed to this work and make sure that Dolly's legacy carries forward and her dream stays alive by putting books into the hands of kids,” said Brooke Fisher-Clark, the executive director of the Imagination Library of Washington.
Currently, about 85,000 children are enrolled in the Washington programs.
Latimer said she hopes Parton’s legacy serves as an example for others.
“ I think the world can learn a lot from her with the way that she used her money to promote the good in the world,” Latimer said. “She saw something that needed (to be) fixed, and she said, ’I'm going to go and help fix that.’"
NWPB’s Lauren Gallup contributed to this report.
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