Hello,
Dolly Parton, simply put, is a legend. An icon. A cultural touchstone. She’s had phenomenal commercial and critical success. She’s earned an “EGOT,” winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Her career spans a half century and she’s still going strong. Not bad for a kid born in a one-room cabin in the mountains of east Tennessee.
But before he passed away, her father told her that probably the most important thing she’s ever done was to start her “Imagination Library.”
“Now I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy,” she says. “He was the smartest man I’ve ever known, but I knew in my heart, his inability to read probably kept him from seeing all his dreams come true. Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission.”
It’s a mission that the United Way of Northern Arizona shares. That’s why we partner with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and provide age-appropriate books to more than 1,400 children every month in Coconino, Navajo and Apache counties.