News of Dolly Parton’s passing has circulated around the world, but in Prince Albert, her legacy continues to arrive in every book at the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
“It pulled on the heartstrings of a lot of people for sure,” said Kara Thorpe, member of the library’s volunteer committee, in regards to the beloved songstress’s death. “We did have one member that sent a message saying, ‘I just read the book we got this month, and now it just means something completely different,’ because it was a book about bedtime stories for little ones.”
The Dolly Parton Imagination Library is a program that mails free, high-quality, educational and fun books to children from birth to the age of five.
“What we do as a committee is raise funds to help cover the cost. The way that the program works is that we pay approximately $3.14 per child to be part of the program and that covers a bit of the cost of the book, a bit of the cost of processing,” Thorpe explained. “You can imagine, every book somewhere averages out to being about $12 to $14 a book. The mailing and all of the organization and the shipping is done and funded by the Dolly Parton Imagination Library Foundation.”
Parton first started the foundation in 1995 as a tribute to her father, Robert Parton, who never learned how to read or write. She wanted to inspire the love of literature within young children before they started school, through mailing age-dependent books to registered families.
Though the library does not operate out of physical buildings, it has become a global book-gifting network working with over five countries including Australia and Ireland, partnerships with more than 2,700 community organizations, and has donated over 332 million free books.
“It’s a partnership with the community. One of the things Dolly really believed in is that we change a community by being one with the community,” said Thorpe.
Thorpe added that the local program has about 525 children receiving books with 30 to 40 kids on a waitlist.
“One of the things the Canadians are super proud of is that they seek out Canadian Indigenous or Canadian authors and illustrators, so a high proportion of the books are actually Canadian authors, illustrators. It’s amazing to see and they’re provided by the foundation,” she said.
Thorpe believes early interactions with literacy are what makes the program important to the community as it “really helps to develop a love of reading and success in entering kindergarten.”
“Early love of books lead to so many other things in the future. We will randomly get pictures from families of their little ones reading. We get all kinds of stories about little ones coming into another centre that happens to have one of the books and saying, ‘I have that book at home,’” she said.
Thorpe said the community feedback have been supportive and that the program are looking for ways to memorialize and honour Parton.
“We have a few ideas. One of our biggest earlier this year was to have a birthday party for her, and now we’re not sure. It might just be a ‘celebrate Dolly’, but there’s some things that we’ve got percolating in the background,” she said.
As for the future, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library intends to stay fully committed to Parton’s legacy and message.
“We will just continue to share her love and her passion for early literacy and continue to talk about all of the stuff and the heart that came behind her starting up the library in the first place,” said Thorpe.
