BEVERLEY & TENNESSEE – The death of Dolly Parton has prompted tributes around the world to a career which made her one of the most recognisable singers of her generation.
Here in the East Riding, however, her legacy can also be found somewhere rather less obvious: on children’s bookshelves.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library sends children an age-appropriate book, personally addressed to them, every month from birth until their fifth birthday. A child enrolled from birth can therefore receive 60 books before starting school.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council first joined the scheme in 2019, initially providing books for looked-after children, children in need and children on child protection plans.
Then, in 2024, the council made a £500,000 investment to extend Dolly’s scheme to every child under five living in the East Riding.
By August that year, 5,000 local children had already been registered. The programme was also extended into the council’s four nursery schools, including Beverley Manor Nursery School, and around 300 private, voluntary and independent early-years providers across the East Riding. The potential scale of Dolly’s contribution locally is considerable. Every registered child receives as many as 12 books a year. At the 5,000 registrations already recorded in August 2024, that would represent the capacity to distribute around 60,000 books to East Riding children in a year, although the actual total will depend on children’s ages, when they joined and how long they remained registered.
There is evidence that those books can make a difference beyond simply providing families with something new to read.
When promoting the scheme locally, East Riding Council cited research from neighbouring North Lincolnshire which found parents participating in the Imagination Library were 30 per cent more likely to read with their child every day. Children enrolled for more than a year had a 40 per cent greater chance of achieving a Good Level of Development, while their chance of achieving the Early Learning Goal for reading was 54 per cent higher than comparable children outside the programme.
The Dollywood Foundation subsequently reported that 67.1 per cent of participating North Lincolnshire children achieved a good level of development, compared with 52.6 per cent of their peers.
” Dolly’s incredible vision to support children to read across the globe, including right here in the East Riding, will have a lasting legacy.”
East Riding Council
The scheme was inspired by Dolly Parton’s father, who could neither read nor write. She established the first Imagination Library in her home county in Tennessee in 1995, before eventually taking it around the world.
By the end of 2025, it had distributed more than 304 million books worldwide, including almost 760,000 books in the UK during 2025 alone.
East Riding Council has continued to evaluate the local programme. In March 2025 it opened a consultation specifically asking parents and carers of under-fives about their experience of the Imagination Library and how it could be improved.
Following Dolly Parton’s death, the council said her vision had allowed “countless children” in the East Riding to benefit from the programme and that her work supporting children to read would leave a lasting legacy.
For thousands of families in Beverley and across the East Riding, that legacy is already sitting on the bookshelf.
Photo Credit: Dolly Parton Imagination Library