Long before Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library became an international early literacy effort, it started with something deeply personal.
Parton created the program in honor of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who never had the opportunity to learn to read or write. She has often described him as one of the smartest people she knew, but she also recognized how his inability to read limited him throughout his life.
That stayed with her.
In 1995, Parton launched the Imagination Library in her home county in East Tennessee with a simple idea: give young children books of their own and help families begin building a love of reading long before kindergarten. What started locally has since grown into a worldwide early literacy effort, mailing millions of books to young children each month.
For Future Ready Five CEO Mario Basora, the story behind the program is just as meaningful as its extraordinary reach.
“Dolly understood something that is at the heart of our work at Future Ready Five: what happens in a child’s earliest years can influence the course of their entire life,” Basora said. “She saw firsthand how a lack of opportunity early in life could create limitations later. Then she turned that experience into something that could give millions of children a stronger start.”
Kindergarten readiness is about much more than kindergarten
Future Ready Five works toward a community where every child enters kindergarten ready to learn and thrive.
But the goal isn’t simply to prepare children for their first day of school.
Early childhood is the beginning of a much longer journey.
During a child’s first five years, the brain is developing rapidly as children build language, communication, social-emotional, cognitive and physical skills. The experiences and relationships children have during those years help create the foundation they will continue building on throughout school and into adulthood.
A child who arrives at kindergarten ready to learn has an opportunity to begin that next chapter from a position of strength. When children enter school already behind their peers, teachers and families may be working not only to help them learn new skills, but also to close gaps that developed before formal schooling even began.
Those early differences can matter well beyond kindergarten.
“We sometimes talk about kindergarten readiness as though kindergarten is the finish line,” Basora said. “It really is the starting line. We want children to begin school with the foundation they need to keep learning, growing and taking advantage of the opportunities that come their way throughout their lives.”
That is why Future Ready Five focuses on the years before age five and on helping the adults and organizations surrounding young children understand how much those years matter.
Literacy begins before a child can read
That connection is particularly clear in early literacy.
Learning to read doesn’t suddenly begin when a child enters a classroom and opens a reading textbook.
It begins much earlier.
It happens when a baby hears an adult talking and begins recognizing sounds. When a toddler points at a picture and learns a new word. When a preschooler listens to the same favorite story for what feels like the hundredth time, predicts what comes next or asks a question about a character.
Books create opportunities for all of those interactions.
That is part of the brilliance of Parton’s approach. Putting books into homes doesn’t simply provide children with something to read later. It gives families another way to talk, connect, explore and learn together now.
Future Ready Five approaches kindergarten readiness with that same emphasis on the everyday experiences that add up over time.
In early childhood classrooms, educators build vocabulary through conversation, strengthen communication through play, introduce children to stories and songs, help them learn to manage emotions and give them opportunities to solve problems and interact with others.
At home, families reinforce many of those same skills through ordinary moments: reading a bedtime story, counting items at the grocery store, talking about colors on a walk or asking a child what they think will happen next.
No single moment determines a child’s future. But thousands of those moments, accumulated over the first five years, help build the foundation for what comes next.
Turning an idea into lasting impact
There is another part of Dolly Parton’s story that resonates with Basora and the work of Future Ready Five: she didn’t stop at identifying a problem.
She built something.
The Imagination Library began in one Tennessee county and grew because communities, organizations and partners embraced the idea and helped extend its reach.
Future Ready Five is working toward that same kind of community ownership around kindergarten readiness in Franklin County.
No single preschool, family, nonprofit, library, health care provider or community organization can ensure every child is ready for kindergarten. But when those groups understand the importance of the first five years and work toward a shared goal, their collective impact can be much greater.
For Basora, that is ultimately what makes Parton’s work such a powerful example.
“She took something personal and turned it into something transformational,” he said. “She helped people understand that giving a child an opportunity early can change what becomes possible later. That’s the kind of lasting impact we want Future Ready Five to have.”
The goal is not simply for more children to be ready for kindergarten.
It is for children to begin their educational journey equipped to participate, learn and continue building skills alongside their peers, creating a stronger foundation for the opportunities that will follow them through school, work and life. Because when we invest in children early, we expand what is possible for them later.