Stella Parton’s family is asking people to keep Dolly Parton’s work moving: donate to the Imagination Library, the book program she built for children. Dolly Parton died aged 80 after leaving a charitable record that was never just about money, but about steady, targeted help for children.
More than 300m books have gone out since 1995, with the Imagination Library sending a free book every month from birth until age five. Last year alone, that worked out to one book every 0.78 seconds, a scale that turns what could have been a local gesture into a global distribution machine.
Sevier County and $500
In 1991, Parton put that same logic to work in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she offered seventh and eighth-grade students $500 each if they graduated high school. The students had to pick a buddy to hold each other accountable, and the high school dropout rate fell from 35% to 6%.
Her giving did not stop at one program. In 2016, the Dollywood Foundation distributed $12m to Sevier County families whose homes were destroyed in wildfires, and in 2024 it pledged $2m to recovery efforts in east Tennessee after Hurricane Helene. Scholarships also remained part of the foundation’s regular work, with thousands of dollars handed out every year to high school students in Sevier County.
Children at the center
Parton said in 2021, “I’m kind of addicted to the feeling of giving. Knowing that I’m doing something good for someone else.” That line fits the record. In 2017, she gave $1m to the Pediatric Cancer Program at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's hospital in Tennessee, saying the gift honored her niece who survived leukemia, and in 2022 she gave $1m more for paediatric infectious disease research.
Her explanation for the Imagination Library was even more direct: “My father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling that could be.” She also said, “It’s the fact they get recognised,” and added, “They get this little book with their little name on it in the mail, and they feel special.”
2020 YouTube nights
In 2020, Parton read picture books aloud on YouTube on Thursday nights for 10 weeks, putting her own voice inside the same child-first model that defined the Imagination Library. She also told Oprah Winfrey, “I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine.” That is the thread running through her philanthropy: personal, specific, and aimed at children rather than publicity.
The unusual part is how broad the giving became without losing that focus. Parton founded the Dollywood Foundation in 1988, later backed a 30,000-square-foot bald eagle sanctuary, and still kept returning to children’s books, scholarships, disaster aid, and health funding. If readers want to honor that legacy, the practical step is the one her family gave: support the Imagination Library, because that is where her child-centered giving still has room to grow.
