I’ve been thinking a lot about Dolly Parton today.
When our kids were very small, we were also very broke. We went to the library, of course. A lot. But we were also part of something called Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Every month, a book would arrive in the mail for each of our kids. Completely free. Something colorful and age-appropriate, chosen especially for little hands and growing minds. Because we had two kids under five, two books would show up at our house every month, and they would share them.
It might not sound like a huge thing. But when you don’t have much extra money, a brand-new book arriving in the mail with your child’s name on it feels like a very big thing. Back then, “free” meant more than getting something for nothing. It meant access.
The whole idea behind the Imagination Library was beautifully simple: Dolly Parton wanted children to have access to books regardless of how much money their families had. She wanted to foster a love of books and reading as early as possible.
And she did.
We don’t have those little books anymore. As our kids grew up, we donated them so other children could love them too. But I still remember so many of them.
The Little Engine That Could.
Llama Llama Red Pajama.
Goodnight, Gorilla.
Those weren’t just books sitting on a shelf.
They were some of our very first bedtime stories.
They were tiny people in pajamas piled beside us, asking for one more book.
They were little voices memorizing the words before they could actually read them.
They were nights when money was tight, life was exhausting, and somehow there was still this small, hardback package arriving at our door saying, in its own way, “Here. This is for your babies.”
And behind it was a woman our children had never met.
Sometimes the good you put into the world travels much farther than you will ever know.
You might fund a book and never meet the child who holds it.
You might start a program and never meet the tired parent reading one of those books for the seventeenth time while silently begging the llama to please just go to sleep already.
You might give something away and never know that, decades later, someone still remembers what it meant to receive it during a season when there wasn’t much extra to go around.
We talk a lot about legacy as though it has to be something enormous. A name on a building. An award. A title. Something impressive enough to make the history books.
But maybe sometimes legacy looks like a bedtime story.
Maybe it looks like making sure a child you will never meet has a book of their own.
Maybe it’s simply deciding that whatever influence, resources, talent, time, or kindness you have, you’re going to use some of it to make the road a little easier for somebody coming behind you.
Our kids are grown now.
Those books are long gone.
But the stories stayed and so did the kindness behind them.
What a remarkable thing, to leave this world having made it a little more colorful, a little more musical, and a little more generous.
Rest well, Dolly.
Thank you for the music.
And from one mom who remembers those little books arriving in the mail all those years ago, thank you for the bedtime stories, too. 
“I’ve decided that she has the brains of a computer, the heart of an artist, and the spirit of a minister.” -Ralph Emery about Dolly Parton
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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