United Way of Northern Arizona has launched a campaign to add 200 more children in Coconino, Navajo, and Apache counties to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library by the end of this summer.
The free book program is available to all children from birth to five years old and does not have any income eligibility requirements. The country music icon started the program in 1995 to honor her father, a sharecropper in Tennessee.
“He was the smartest man I have ever known but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams,” she said.
The Imagination Library started in Parton’s home county with the goal of providing every preschool child there with a library of books to encourage a love of reading and learning.
The initiative was so successful that she began offering the program to any community that would support it financially. It now sends out more than 2 million free books each month to children around the world, mailing them directly to families.