CW: Death
Tributes have poured in since Dolly Parton’s passing. Many came from friends and fans who loved her music. But others shared how much they appreciated her passion for literacy and her belief that all children deserve books, even if they can’t read them in traditional ways.
Dolly never had children herself. Yet, thanks to her Imagination Library, which helped create Braille Tales, she helped thousands of children who are blind or have limited vision experience the joy of reading. The Imagination Library provides free monthly books for kids from birth to the age of five, including books available in Braille and as audiobooks.
Jessica Caromile of Rhode Island was grateful to find the program. She found it while scrolling through a Facebook page for parents of children with a condition called optic nerve hypoplasia. Her son Greyson, now 12, lives with the condition and is almost completely blind.
Optic nerve hypoplasia affects about 1 in 10,000 children. According to the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, it is the most common cause of blindness in North American children. The optic nerve doesn’t fully develop before birth, disrupting the pathway between the eye and brain and sometimes affecting other parts of the brain.
For two years, the books arrived but weren’t touched. When Jessica read to him, he toddled away. But around his second birthday in December 2016, everything changed.
Greyson picked up a Braille book she’d left on a chair and started to feel his way through it. Jessica was stunned, so she filmed it and posted the video on Facebook. She wasn’t just doing it to mark a milestone, but to show why access and inclusion matter.
The program, a collaboration between the Imagination Library and the American Printing House for the Blind, started sending out one Braille book every other month to all of the blind and low-vision children under age five who were signed up across the U.S. starting in 2012. Over 5,600 families have received over 110,000 Braille books since then.
In Kentucky, there’s a program available at the Kentucky Correctional Institution where women learn to transcribe Braille in order to help get books to more children. Not only does this program help blind children, but it also creates a unique opportunity for the inmates.
Dolly Parton didn’t frame her project as advocacy. She didn’t need to. Her legacy is in the hands of children like Greyson, who read books and are proof that accessibility can be a form of care. Her legacy is seen in families who felt less alone and in children who were treated as readers, not charity cases, with imaginations and creativity that deserved to be nurtured.
She may not have had children of her own, but she helped impact millions through the power of books. And she offered something more than charity or pity: a childhood filled with books that arrived one envelope at a time.
Sources:
Cogan, Shannon. “Kentucky Correctional Inmates Help Blind Children Get Books.” WAVE 3 News, 27 Jan. 2017, https://www.wave3.com/story/34365768/kentucky-correctional-inmates-help-blind-children-get-books/.
Garcia-Filion, Patrick, and Mary Borchert. “Optic Nerve Hypoplasia Syndrome: A Review of the Epidemiology and Clinical Associations.” Current Treatment Options in Neurology, vol. 15, 2013, pp. 78–89. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11940-012-0209-2.
Hinnen, Jacob. “Optic Nerve Hypoplasia.” American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, 11 July 2024, https://www.aapos.org/glossary/optic-nerve-hypoplasia.
Hohman, Maura. “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Sent Over 100,000 Braille Books to Low-Vision Kids: She ‘Cared About Everyone.’” TODAY.com, 27 Aug. 2026, https://www.today.com/health/childrens-health/dolly-parton-imagination-library-braille-books-blind-low-vision-kids-rcna594713.
Mulroy, Clare. “Dolly Parton Wanted to Be Remembered as a ‘Book Lady.’ Inside Her Imagination Library.” USA TODAY, 25 Aug. 2026, https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2026/08/25/dolly-parton-books-imagination-library/91462504007/.
Pao, Maureen. “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Gave the Gift of Books to Millions of Children.” NPR, 26 Aug. 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/08/26/nx-s1-5944531/dolly-partons-imagination-library-gave-the-gift-of-books-to-millions-of-children.
Steinkuller, Paul G., et al. “Childhood Blindness.” Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, vol. 3, no. 1, Feb. 1999, pp. 26–32. Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1091-8531(99)70091-1.