Documentary The Library That Dolly Built Recognizes the Saintly Work of Dolly Parton in Promoting Child Literacy

Dolly Parton’s status as a living saint is pretty well established at this point—in recent years, we’ve written about the real possibility that she may be an actual angel, and recognized her as one of our key sources of comfort during the COVID-19 pandemic, among other things. But those are just our own opinions, which you might (for some insane reason) disagree with. No one, however, can deny the massive contribution that Parton has made to child literacy, however, via her 1995 establishment of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, an organization that started small and has now grown into a nationwide distribution network for free children’s books. Since beginning in one county of east Tennessee, in fact, the Imagination Library now mails more than 1 million books per month in the U.S., Australia, England, Canada and Ireland. To date, they’ve given away more than 100 million free books.

In recognition of that truly amazing achievement, Parton and the Imagination Library now have their own upcoming documentary, The Library That Dolly Built. Produced by Land Grant Films, the movie is directed by journalism professor Nick Geidner and was largely crewed by University of Tennessee students who wanted to recognize Parton’s ceaseless efforts to build a better world. Naturally, the film features Parton’s music and involvement, and is narrated by actress and author Danica McKellar.