Before Robert Lee Parton died in 2000, he heard children in Sevier County call him the Book Lady’s Daddy. That simple title, earned by a farmer who never learned to read or write, became one of the deepest honors of Dolly Parton’s life.
She later said that seeing his pride in being called the Book Lady’s Daddy meant more to her than any music industry award she had ever received.
Robert spent his life working the harsh dirt of the Great Smoky Mountains to feed twelve children. Because of the era and the grinding poverty of his youth, formal education was a luxury his family could not afford. In a culture that often looked down on people without schooling, Dolly fiercely defended his dignity. She made sure politicians, the press and the public understood that his lack of literacy had nothing to do with his intelligence, his work ethic or his character.
In 1995, she launched the Imagination Library in her hometown of Sevier County, Tennessee. The original idea was local and simple. Any child born in the county, no matter the family income, would receive a high-quality, age-appropriate book in the mail every month from birth until kindergarten. She designed the packages to be addressed directly to the children so they felt the thrill of receiving their own mail and built early excitement around reading.
The initiative was deeply personal. Dolly wanted no child in her community to grow up without the opportunity her father had been denied. She invited Robert to help launch the program, and before he died in 2000 he saw it fully functioning. Local children ran up to him and called him the Book Lady’s Daddy.
After his death, what began in one county rapidly became a national operation. By 2000, the Dollywood Foundation announced that any community could replicate the model. Local affiliates such as Rotary clubs, school districts and small nonprofits covered the base cost of books and postage. Parton’s foundation managed the centralized database, the expert book selection panel and the complex shipping logistics.
The replication model made the program scale at an unprecedented rate. By 2003, it had mailed its one-millionth book. The next year Tennessee became the first state to pledge statewide coverage. Other states followed, recognizing the impact on kindergarten readiness in rural and urban school systems.
The effort soon crossed borders. Canada joined in 2006, the United Kingdom in 2007, Australia in 2013 and the Republic of Ireland in 2019. In each country, a localized committee of educators, reading specialists and pediatricians selected titles that reflected the cultural landscape of the children receiving them. Every child still began with The Little Engine That Could.
The sheer volume began to rival major global publishing houses. In 2018, Parton traveled to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. to donate the 100 millionth book. It was a staggering achievement for an operation that started in a small East Tennessee office, but the growth only accelerated from there.
Today the network built in Robert Lee Parton’s name mails more than 2.4 million free books every month. Total distribution recently crossed 240 million, reaching children in remote mountain towns, massive coastal cities and overseas communities.
Every book that arrives in a family’s mailbox carries the quiet legacy of a man who spent his life working the soil. A father who could not read a single sentence ended up putting a library into the hands of an entire generation.