More than 100,000 D.C. children have received free books because of Dolly Parton. The country music icon died Tuesday, Aug. 25, at age 80 after what the Los Angeles Times reported as a brief battle with cancer. She left behind a literacy empire that reached deep into the District through a program Councilmember Charles Allen modeled directly on her work.

Allen introduced D.C.'s Books from Birth program after a family visit to East Tennessee, where he watched his 2-year-old niece toddle to the mailbox and tear open a book addressed to her through Parton's Imagination Library. His brother had signed the girl up at the hospital just after she was born.

"I had visited family in Tennessee, and their 2-year-old just kind of toddled up [to] the mailbox, opened up a book, and I was like, I want that in D.C.," Allen told DC News Now.

That moment stuck. Allen partnered with Parton's organization to create Books from Birth, which mails one free book each month to every enrolled D.C. child from birth until age 5. The program, funded by the District government and run through DC Public Library, is now 10 years old and has distributed more than 4 million books.

Allen met Parton in 2018 at the Library of Congress, when the Imagination Library celebrated donating its 100 millionth book. He called her "a little piston of energy" whose drive inspired everyone around her to do good.

D.C. resident Austin Hart said the books program was the first thing he thought of when he heard the news, telling DC News Now it was sad but also comforting to think about what Parton built for young kids in the city.

Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, inspired by her father's inability to read. By the time of her death, the program had gifted more than 318 million books worldwide to over 3 million registered children. At the 2018 Library of Congress ceremony, Parton called the program the most precious thing she had ever been involved in and said she was prouder of it than anything else in her career.

Her family asked for donations to the Imagination Library in lieu of flowers. President Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff for one week.

Neighboring Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland run similar Imagination Library-affiliated programs. D.C. families can enroll children under 5 at dclibrary.org. The program added a fully bilingual English-Spanish book option in June 2024.

Dollywood Foundation president Jeff Conyers told the Los Angeles Times that Parton built things designed to keep doing good in the world long after her.