Speaking on The Late Late Show in 2022,<\/a> Parton told Ryan Tubridy that her father’s experience had stayed with her throughout her life.<\/p>\n“He felt crippled by the fact that he couldn’t read and write,” she said, describing him as one the smartest people she had ever known.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/001b5a0b-614.jpg\"\/)
\nJames Patterson and Dolly Parton on the Late Late Show in 2022<\/p>\n
Parton involved her father in the project and later said the pride he took in the Imagination Library meant more to him than her fame.<\/p>\n
What began as a local initiative in Tennessee grew into an international programme, providing free, age-appropriate books to children from birth until the age of five.<\/p>\n
Ireland became the fifth country to introduce the programme when it launched here in 2019.<\/p>\n
The first Irish scheme was established in Dublin 24 and coordinated by the Tallaght-based Childhood Development Initiative, with support from An Post, Dublin Rotary Club and Shamrock Rovers.<\/p>\n
At the time, Parton encouraged parents in the area to sign their children up.<\/p>\n
“You can never get enough books into the hands of young children,” she said.<\/p>\n
Parton said she knew children in Ireland had their own dreams, whether it was becoming a doctor, inventor, teacher, writer or singer, adding that the seeds of those dreams could often be found in books.<\/p>\n
By March 2022, the Imagination Library had gifted more than 200,000 books to Irish pre-school children. Registered children receive an age-appropriate book addressed personally to them each month, at no cost to the family. The final book currently sent to Irish children when they turn five is The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.<\/p>\n
Parton’s idea grew far beyond the community in Tennessee where it began.<\/p>\n
As of June this year, the Imagination Library was gifting more than 3.5 million books every month and had distributed more than 325 million books to children in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland.<\/p>\n
Parton’s philanthropy also extended well beyond literacy.<\/p>\n
In 2020, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support Covid-19 research. Some of that funding supported critical early research connected with Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. She made a further $1 million donation to Vanderbilt in 2022 to support paediatric infectious disease research.<\/p>\n
Parton also established the My People Fund after devastating wildfires struck her home state of Tennessee in 2016. More than 900 families whose homes were destroyed or left uninhabitable received $10,000 each through the fund.<\/p>\n
But the Imagination Library remained one of the most personal projects of Parton’s life.<\/p>\n
She once recalled that her father loved hearing children call her “The Book Lady”, saying it meant more to him than the fact she had become a star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of Dolly Parton has asked those wishing to honour the late country music star to support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-604563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}