Dolly Parton’s father grew up poor and by no means bought the prospect to study to learn.
Impressed by her upbringing, the 78-year-old nation music legend has made it her mission over the previous three many years to enhance literacy by way of her Creativeness Library guide giveaway program. It has expanded statewide in locations like Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states the place all kids underneath the age of 5 can enroll to have books mailed to their houses month-to-month.
To have a good time, she made stops Tuesday in each states to advertise this system and inform the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, a lot of people never had a chance to go to school because they had to work on the farms,” she stated on the Folly Theater in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri. “They had to do whatever it took to keep the rest of the family going.”
Parton, the fourth of 12 kids from a poor Appalachian household, stated her father was “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known,” however he was embarrassed that he could not learn.
And so she determined to assist different children, initially rolling out this system in a single county in her dwelling state of Tennessee in 1995. It unfold rapidly from there, and at the moment over 3 million books are despatched out every month. For the reason that program began, books have been despatched to greater than 240 million to children within the U.S., Canada, the UK, Eire and Australia.
Missouri covers the complete value of this system, which totaled $11 million within the newest fiscal yr. A lot of the different states chip in cash by way of a cost-sharing mannequin.
“The kids started calling me the ‘book lady,’” Parton stated. “And Daddy was more proud of that than he was that I was a star. But Daddy got to feeling like he had really done something great as well.”
In Kentucky, the Creativeness Library reaches kids in all 120 counties, Gov. Andy Beshear stated at an occasion Tuesday with Parton. Greater than 120,000 Kentucky kids — practically half of all preschoolers within the state — are at the moment enrolled to obtain books by way of this system, first woman Britainy Beshear stated.
It encourages households to learn collectively, and it permits kids to have their very own private library earlier than beginning kindergarten, without charge to their households, the primary woman stated.
“It’s really a great way to teach children when they’re very young to learn to love books and to learn to read,” Parton stated in the course of the occasion in Lexington, Kentucky.
Parton, who earned the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award a decade in the past, stated she ultimately needs to see this system in each state. Whereas there’s a presence in all of them, 21 have laws making certain all children underneath 5 can enroll. She stated she is proud that her dad lived lengthy sufficient to see this system get off the bottom.
“That was kind of my way to honor my dad, because the Bible says to honor your father and mother,” she stated. “And I don’t think that just means, ‘just obey.’ I think it means to bring honor to their name and to them.”
Parton is an creator herself whose titles embody the 1996 kids’s guide “Coat of Many Colors,” which is a part of the guide giveaway program.
As she ready to sing her well-known track by the identical identify, she defined that it’s a few coat her mom made her from a patchwork of mismatched material, because the household was too poor to afford a big piece of a single material. Parton was pleased with it as a result of her mom likened it the multicolored coat that’s informed about within the Bible — a incredible reward from Jacob to his son Joseph.
Classmates, nonetheless, laughed at her. For years, she stated the expertise was a “deep, deep hurt.”
She stated that with writing and performing the track, “the hurt just left me.” She acquired letters over time from folks saying it did the identical factor for them.
“The fact,” she defined, “that that little song has just meant so much not only to me, but to so many other people for so many different reasons, makes it my favorite song.”
Requested in Kentucky about her lasting legacy, Parton stated she’d wish to be remembered as “a good ole girl” who labored onerous and tried to make folks completely happy and the world a greater place.
“After all I need to be generally known as a songwriter and a singer, however I actually can say that the Creativeness Library has meant as a lot, if no more, to me than practically something that I’ve ever performed,” she stated.
