Dolly Parton Thanks Shaw Councilmember for Books From Birth Program

Country music legend Dolly Parton recorded a video today to lend support to the D.C. Public Library’s Books From Birth program, which officially launched today.

The program, proposed last year by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who represents Shaw, provides a free book every month to enrolled kids from birth until age five. To provide the books, the D.C. Public Library is partnering with Parton’s Imagination Library, an organization the singer started in 1995 in Tennessee.

The District’s Books From Birth program was inspired by Imagination Library, which provides free books to over 900,000 children from birth to age five in the U.S. and Canada.

In a video released by the D.C. Library, Parton thanked Allen specifically for proposing the program.

Read more on Borderstan’s sibling publication, Hill Now.