## A Legacy Beyond Music
Dolly Parton has written over 3,000 songs, won countless awards, and built a massive theme park empire. Yet, she frequently states that her absolute proudest accomplishment has absolutely nothing to do with music or Hollywood. It is rooted entirely in her deep respect for her father, Robert Lee Parton.
## Honoring a Father
Dolly’s father was an incredibly intelligent, hardworking farmer who provided for 12 children in extreme poverty in the Smoky Mountains. However, like many of his generation, he never had the opportunity to go to school, and he couldn’t read or write. Dolly recognized how this secretly pained him. To honor him, she launched the ‘Imagination Library’ in 1995, a program designed to mail one free, high-quality book every month to young children from birth to age five.
## A Global Phenomenon
What started as a small program for the children in her home county of Sevier, Tennessee, exploded into an unprecedented global charity. To date, the Imagination Library has gifted over 200 million free books to children in multiple countries. Dolly’s father lived long enough to see the program succeed, and to the millions of children who benefit, she is not known as a music legend—she is simply, wonderfully known as ‘The Book Lady.’