Our Program with the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

10 Year Anniversary 6^th March 2025

To the start of the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

with the Rotary Club of Cleethorpes 

Launched in 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has become the leading international early childhood book-gifting programme and has created a library at home for millions of children.

In celebrating the value of libraries, we celebrate not only public buildings that house thousands of books everywhere around the world, but also the positive impact of a child’s home library that helps celebrate the magic of reading. Motivated by her father’s inability to read or write, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is dedicated to inspiring a love of reading and learning by gifting books, free of charge to families, through funding shared by Dolly’s charity, The Dollywood Foundation, and local community partnerships. Through an exclusive partnership with Penguin Random House, the quality of the books is assured, and costs are kept to a minimum, making

the programme accessible to more children.

Since inception a total of 264,182,752 million books have been gifted

(this equates to a book mailed every 0.86 seconds)

Locally launched in 2015

 since starting in 2015 we supported 24 Primary Schools and Nurseries with books so far, we supplied 43,519 to local children.2

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, United States
A Free Book Gifting Program
In 1995, Dolly Parton launched an exciting new effort, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, to benefit the children of her home county in East Tennessee, USA. Dolly’s vision was to foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families. The new program gave each child a specially selected book each month. By mailing high quality, age-appropriate books directly to their homes, Dolly wanted children to be excited about books and to feel the magic that books can create. Moreover, she could ensure that every child would have books, regardless of their family’s income.
Since its launch, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has set and surpassed many goals and milestones. National replication, which started in 2000, allowed more and more communities to adopt the program. State-wide coverage was established in Tennessee in 2004. Furthermore, international growth provided expansion in Canada (2006), United Kingdom (2007) and Australia (2014).
The first book order in 1995 totalled just over 1,700.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, United Kingdom
In December 2007, Dolly Parton travelled to London to announce that her Imagination Library was launching in the UK!
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting programme devoted to inspiring a love of reading in the hearts of children everywhere. With help from our local partners, the first Imagination Library book was gifted in the UK in 2008 and we’ve grown every year since then, reaching more and more children each month.

Locally
We are involved with 24 primary schools and nurseries in
North East Lincolnshire. 

DPIL Impact Report

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library