After a tornado devastated swaths of their Nashville neighborhood in 2020, Traci Hilton and her young daughters found solace in a delivery from Dolly Parton. For several nights after the storm, Hilton read them “The Rabbit Listened,” a picture book about how a child who builds a tower out of blocks learns to cope with grief after crows topple it. It quickly became a household favorite.
“I could not get through it without crying,” Hilton said in an interview.
The Hiltons’ copy of “The Rabbit Listened” is one of more than 300 million free books that have been given to millions of children by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, according to its website.
The program has a presence in all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and four other countries. (Representatives for the Imagination Library declined to answer questions about recent sign-ups, donations and other matters from The New York Times on Wednesday following Parton’s death on Tuesday, explaining that they were overwhelmed.)
But in some states, the program, which relies heavily on state-sponsored grants to run, now finds its future threatened.
In 1995, Parton started the Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tenn., where she grew up. The program mails a free book each month to registered children from birth until age 5.
The Imagination Library mushroomed after forging an exclusive partnership with Penguin Young Readers in 2001; the agreement was later expanded to include Random House Children’s Books, after Penguin and Random House merged in 2012. In the United States, books are selected by childhood literacy experts, according to the Imagination Library website. Educational nonprofits that partner with the library help to enroll children in their local communities in the program, paying an average of $2.60 per child to cover the costs of books and postage each month.
Parton dedicated the library to her father, a farmer who never learned to read or write.
“My daddy just loved it when all the little kids would call me ‘The Book Lady,’” Parton wrote in a note to fans that was previously posted to her website. “That meant more to him than the fact that I had become a star and worked my butt off.”
As Parton grew from a child born below the poverty line in rural Appalachia into an American icon whose legend rivaled that of Paul Bunyan, she retained her knack for connecting with everyday people. Each monthly package from the Imagination Library arrives with a personalized touch: the child’s own name printed on the label.
The program has apparently made its mark on childhood literacy. In 2025, a study conducted by United Way, a nonprofit organization that partners with the Imagination Library in some locations, surveyed more than 86,000 families and found that children enrolled in the program were four times more likely to demonstrate stronger emerging reading skills.
But even Parton’s magnetism and the backing of a powerhouse publisher have not kept the organization immune from state-level budget cuts threatening public libraries and other educational nonprofits across America.
The Dollywood Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the Imagination Library, handles most overhead fees for the program. But to reach as many families as possible, including in the impoverished and rural communities that need the books the most, many of the program’s partners rely on state grants to split costs and increase access.
While states including Oregon and Tennessee have taken steps to proactively protect the nonprofit’s operations, the organization’s legacy hangs in the balance in many others.
In Indiana last year, Governor Mike Braun cut state funding for the program entirely, prompting the state’s first lady, Maureen Braun, to launch a fund-raising campaign to keep it afloat. Kentucky lawmakers proposed a budget reduction this year that would have effectively shut down the program in about half of Kentucky’s poorest counties before restoring the state’s 50 percent funding match after public outcry.
In Maine, the program ended in June after losing state funding, according to WAGM, a local television station, leaving United Way scrambling to fill in the gaps by starting another initiative to provide books to newborns. And Missouri slashed $4 million in funding for the nonprofit in its 2027 budget, effectively freezing new enrollment.
Storied, Inc., the Imagination Library’s program partner in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, downsized from around 18,000 or 19,000 children to roughly 2,100 after a grant from the Nevada Department of Education ran out last year, according to its executive director, Meredith Helmick.
“We have not been able to find funding to reopen on a large scale,” said Helmick, who runs Storied, Inc. with her husband, Kyle Helmick.
When Storied, Inc. announced that the state grant would not be renewed, “we were flooded with hundreds of emails,” she said. “The legislative office in Carson City even was overwhelmed with the number of letters that they got from parents just talking about how much it’s brought their families together.”
Like many of the program’s partners, Storied, Inc. stayed afloat with the help of community donors, including the Vegas Golden Knights Foundation. Once Parton’s family had published a statement requesting gifts in her memory be made to the Imagination Library, Helmick saw an influx of donations.
The wave of one-time memorial contributions is unlikely to substitute for most state grants. Nevertheless, families from across the country say that Parton’s desire to spread a love for reading has affected them indelibly.
When children turn 5 and age out of the program, they receive one last book, “Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!,” by Nancy Carlson. The package includes a note from Parton urging graduates to visit their local public library to discover even more books.
“I knew it was our last Dolly book that we were getting. I was upset but I was trying to be brave,” Hilton said.
“But my youngest, Vivian, just burst into tears and was like, ‘I don’t want to read the book! I’m not ready to read the last Dolly book! Please don’t read it to me!’ And when I was reading her the note, she was just crying and crying. And it just really, really amazed me at how important it was to her, too.”