Dolly Parton Explains How Her Imagination Library Inspired New Children’s Songs

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library provides free books to children from birth to 5 years of age, but it's also inspired a new set of songs from the country legend.

Families who have recently received Imagination Library books have also been given a copy of "I Believe in You," a song that Parton wrote, based on some of the Library's most-beloved books, for Dollywood's Imagination Playhouse.

"I work with several publishers on the children’s books we have ... and I write songs every time we get a new book for the Imagination Library," Parton explained to The Boot and other reporters at a media event. "We write a play around it, and then I write the song. So after so many years, we decided to put all those songs in a children’s album."

Press play below to hear "I Believe in You." According to Parton's website, 11 additional songs will soon be available for purchase -- and 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the Dollywood Foundation.

Parton was inspired to start the Imagination Library by her own impoverished upbringing in the mountains of East Tennessee.

“That’s one of the things I’m proudest of, of anything I’ve ever done,” Parton says of the Imagination Library. “You can’t educate enough children. A lot of that came from the fact that a lot of my own relatives didn’t get to go to school because we were mountain people. You have to get out and work and help feed the family. My own dad couldn’t read and write. And my dad was very proud of me. He got to live long enough to see the Imagination Library do well, so he felt like he had done something good too — that he was the inspiration for it.”

Listen to Dolly Parton, "I Believe in You":

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