To nine-year-old Zenaida, it was not Dolly Parton’s storied country music career that made her so remarkable.
It was the entertainment icon’s beloved Imagination Library book donation programme that had the greatest impact on the young girl’s life.
“These are the first books I learned how to read”, Zenaida said, flipping through Parton’s children’s book “Coat of Many Colours” at a makeshift memorial in the singer-songwriter’s hometown, at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Parton’s extraordinarily successful book project was born from personal anguish: her father grew up unable to read in rural Tennessee.
Through the Imagination Library, millions of children like Zenaida in the United States and around the world have received free books by mail every month, from birth until the age of five.
For Kendal Manning’s two young boys, the programme has been a godsend.
“We’ve been receiving their books since they were born. We have them all”, the 41-year-old theatre performer said at the memorial, where several Imagination Library books had been placed among the flowers.
When Manning’s boys were born, “immediately we were sent something in the mail to sign up”, she said.
“It says mountains about the person that she is, the heart that she had for people”, Manning added.
Parton, who died this week at 80, was renowned globally for her music. But locals remembered her just as much for her charitable work and care for younger generations in the blue-collar communities of her native East Tennessee.
Her non-profit foundation has pledged to keep the popular programme going.
What began in 1995 as Parton’s modest giveaway of 6,000 books to children in need has grown into an operation involving hundreds of local organisations and multiple publishers.
“Now we give away 3.4 million books a month to kids” up to the age of five, Dollywood Foundation treasurer Eugene Naughton said.
The programme is funded by the foundation alongside several other donors.
Literacy was a central focus for Parton, who said she established the Imagination Library because her father’s inability to read “probably kept him from seeing all his dreams come true”.
“I’m the Book Lady to lots of kids and I take great pride in that”, she once said in an interview with NBC’s Boston affiliate.
The books have reached countless families across East Tennessee, where hospitals often invite new parents to enrol their children in the programme.
“I signed up all five of my grandchildren on the day they were born”, Susan Williams recalled in Sevierville.
“My children had the books too, and now their children have them. Two generations”, she said, holding back tears.
The Imagination Library says it has gifted 300 million books since its inception. The programme has also expanded to Australia, Britain, Canada and Ireland.
In the United States, Parton’s books have reached as far as Bethel, Alaska, a small town accessible only by plane or boat that serves as a hub for Indigenous villages.
Zenaida’s mother, Katy Allis, brought her four children to Parton’s memorial to honour the woman who changed their lives.
Her 11-year-old son Victor settled onto the pavement to read his Imagination Library edition of “Llama Llama Red Pajama”, a family favourite.
“I see her programme as a part of our collective culture”, Allis said.
“I don’t know that there are even words to express how important that is”.
Local teacher Tabitha Thomas, 34, was also at the memorial with her three children, who are growing up with the books. Her seven-month-old has already received several in the mail.
Children from low-income families in the region “often don’t have the money to buy those books, so it helps a lot of the community”, she said of Parton’s generosity.
“She’s touched so many lives”. — AFP
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