Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is Still Expanding
The Imagination Library started in Parton’s home state of Tennessee, providing free books to children around the world.
Dolly Parton launched the Imagination Library in 1995 on a premise that hasn’t changed since: send a free book to every registered child under five, once a month, for the first years of their life. No application, no means test, no reading assessment required. It’s as simple as a book, addressed to the child by name, showing up in the mailbox.
Thirty-one years and 330 million books later, the program is still growing, even without her. It now runs across all 50 U.S. states and in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the UK.
Parton died earlier this year. Less than a month later, the Imagination Library announced that it would double its London presence, going from five of the city’s 32 boroughs to 10. That makes 157,000 more children eligible for a book every month.
Jeff Conyers, president of the Dollywood Foundation, said Parton would have been “incredibly proud.” “Dolly always wanted the Imagination Library to be something that lived on for generations into the future,” he told the BBC. “She was constantly pushing us about how we get the Imagination Library to more and more children and more and more families.”
What Parton built was simple enough to cross borders and durable enough to keep going after she was gone. London now covers 10 of its 32 boroughs.
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