In the summer of 2022, Dolly Parton appeared before a room full of governors to talk about books.

Then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson opened the conversation by declaring that “it doesn’t get more bipartisan” than Dolly Parton. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine explained how he had invited lawmakers to the governor’s residence to help take her Imagination Library statewide. Maine Gov. Janet Mills used the occasion to announce that her state would be next. Parton listened, thanked them and returned to the same goal she had been pursuing for nearly three decades: “We’re just wanting to do better, to do more.”

That meeting captures something important about the education legacy Parton leaves behind. The Imagination Library began as a deeply personal tribute to her father and grew into something resembling public infrastructure. By 2024, 21 states had established statewide programs. Today, nearly 3.2 million children around the world receive one of its books each month, including one in seven children under five in the United States.

Parton, who died today at 80, was the Queen of Country Music to most of the world. To millions of children, she was the Book Lady.

Her father, Lee, could not read or write. Parton nevertheless called him the smartest man she had ever known and credited him with teaching her the business sense and work ethic that helped build her career. “My dad couldn’t read or write, and that was kind of crippling to him,” she explained in the 2020 documentary The Library That Dolly Built. She could not change that part of her father’s life, but she could make sure more children grew up surrounded by books.

Her first education project was not actually the Imagination Library. In 1990, Parton asked seventh- and eighth-graders in Sevier County, Tennessee, to choose a “buddy.” If both students graduated from high school, she would give each of them $500. The county’s dropout rate for those classes fell from more than 30 percent to 6 percent. Five years later, she began mailing books to young children in the same community.

The idea was almost radically simple: every enrolled child would receive a free book each month from birth until age five, regardless of family income. The books arrived addressed to the child—not handed out at school, assigned by a teacher or dependent on a parent making it to the library. The first was The Little Engine That Could, a fitting choice for a program that grew from one rural Tennessee county into an international network spanning five countries and thousands of local partners. A child enrolled at birth could enter kindergarten with a personal library of 60 books, each one tangible evidence that someone believed in the life they might imagine.

“Of all the things I’ve done in my life—and it’s been a lot,” Parton said of the program, “this is one of the most precious things.”

There will be plenty written in the days ahead about “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “I Will Always Love You” and the rhinestones. There should be. But Parton’s education legacy may be one of the clearest expressions of what made her so widely loved: it was personal without being small, ambitious without becoming complicated and rooted in the belief that where a child begins should not determine how far that child can go.

Millions of children will continue finding books addressed to them in their mailboxes because the daughter of a man who could not read decided to become the Book Lady.

—Thomas

Looking for your next opportunity in education? W/A Jobs features 3,100+ career opportunities from 300+ organizations across the education industry.