American Dyslexia Association Honors Dolly Parton and the Father Who Could Not Read

SARASOTA, Fla. - EntSun -- The American Dyslexia Association has published a tribute to Dolly Parton, who died on August 25 at 80, and used the occasion to point parents toward one of the simplest tools for a child who will struggle to read: a book in the mailbox.

Parton's family asked that gifts in her memory go to her Imagination Library rather than flowers. Since 1995 it has mailed a free book every month to every enrolled child from birth to age five. By her death it had given away more than 332 million books and was sending three million more every month in five countries.

She built it for her father. Robert Lee Parton farmed tobacco in East Tennessee, was needed at home as a boy, and never learned to read or write. "Daddy thought it was just something he couldn't learn after he was grown, so he never tried to learn to read and write," his daughter said. When she began mailing books, she told him millions of adults could not read either and he had no reason to feel embarrassed. The children of Sevier County started calling her the Book Lady.

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That combination, the embarrassment and the conviction that reading belongs to other people, is familiar ground at the American Dyslexia Association. Children with dyslexia commonly reach the same conclusion about themselves by second grade, and undoing it takes more work than teaching the letters ever did.

Children enrolled for three years or more enter kindergarten ahead of their peers in letter naming, print concepts and phonemic awareness, the exact skills a child with dyslexia finds hardest. In the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40 percent of American fourth graders scored below the basic reading level.

A book in the mail does not replace training, the association notes.

"A book that arrives in the mail with the child's own name on it does something no worksheet can do," said Dr. Livia R. Pailer-Duller of the American Dyslexia Association. "It tells a child who will later be called behind that she belongs with books. She owns sixty of them before she has read one."

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The full tribute is published on the association's blog at dyslexia.me (https://www.dyslexia.me/dolly-parton-book-lady-children-reading/).

The American Dyslexia Association Inc. is a nonprofit based in Osprey, Florida. It helps children, educators and adults affected by dyslexia and dyscalculia with free information, worksheets and the AFS-Method. More at american-dyslexia-association.org (https://www.american-dyslexia-association.org/). Families can check Imagination Library availability at imaginationlibrary.com.