Dolly Parton put her heart in the Heartland with books
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Dolly Parton reading to children. Photo: Shannon Finney/Getty Images
Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday at 80, was a singer, a movie star and an American icon, but to families across Kansas and Missouri, she was the woman who spent decades teaching kids to love books.
The big picture: Parton built a second career out of childhood literacy through her Imagination Library, and Kansas and Missouri were among the first states in the country to put public money behind it.
Catch up quick: Parton's father could not read or write. That's why she started the program in 1995 in East Tennessee. Any family can enroll, regardless of income, and their child gets a book in the mail every month from birth until age 5.
- Every kid gets the same first title: "The Little Engine That Could."
Zoom in: Pratt, Kansas, opened the first site anywhere outside Tennessee in 2005, and the rest of the country followed what worked there. The program reached all 105 Kansas counties in 2023, and Parton flew to Overland Park that August to celebrate.
By the numbers: Kansas has 78,285 kids enrolled, including 16,367 in Johnson County and 2,953 in Wyandotte, the Kansas Office of Early Childhood tells Axios.
- Missouri went statewide in November 2023 and became the first state to cover the entire local cost of the books, so no community had to fundraise. More than 4.3 million have reached Missouri kids since, and 161,361 kids are enrolled now.
Flashback: Parton came to Kansas City on Aug. 27, 2024, to thank Missouri for footing that bill.
- She sang at the Folly Theater downtown, which called itself the Dolly Theater that night, and said being called "the book lady" made her father prouder than anything else she did.
The latest: Missouri lawmakers cut the program's funding from roughly $6 million to $2 million this year and closed it to new signups July 1. Enrolled kids keep getting books.
- Kansas is fully funded and still enrolling, KOEC says.
The bottom line: Parton is gone, but her legacy isn't.