The Imagination Library began in 1995 as a Sevier County programme, run by the Dollywood Foundation from an office on Main Street in Sevierville, and for its first years it mailed free books to children in this one county and nowhere else. Any child registered gets a book a month from birth until the age of five, chosen for their age and addressed to them by name. Dolly Parton said she started it for her father, Robert Lee Parton, who could not read or write. The first order was for about 1,760 books. The Dollywood Foundation, which runs it, had been set up in 1988, and the book programme became the thing it is mainly known for, outgrowing the county it was built for well within a decade of the first mailing. It passed a million books mailed in 2003 and twenty-five million in 2010. By 2016 it was sending a million books a month. The hundred millionth was dedicated to the Library of Congress in 2018, the two hundred millionth followed in 2023, and by February 2025 the running total was over 270 million. It operates in five countries, having reached Canada in 2006, the United Kingdom in 2007, Australia in 2013 and the Republic of Ireland in 2019, and by 2024 it was reaching roughly one American child under five in seven, against one in ten two years earlier. Of everything carrying her name in Sevier County, it is the one whose figures are published, dated and checkable.
Getting there
35.8683, -83.5644
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
