The world was saddened to learn about the death of Dolly Parton on Tuesday, Aug. 25. Tributes to her work, life and career are popping up all over the internet, transcending regional, partisan, class and ethnic lines as Americans collectively mourn one of the best of us.

For far more authoritative and detailed biographies, I’ll leave it to others, but if you want to know more about how she affected others, influenced the culture and shaped what celebrity could — and perhaps — should be — here goes.

Like Fred Rogers, Betty White, Bob Newhart, Julie Andrews, Bob Ross and Robin Williams, there are certain public figures who are nearly universally beloved for their kindness, warmth, sincerity and for making us believe in the goodness of humanity. Parton was certainly in that list and it’s painful to many to know she is gone.

I was never a country music fan, but my parents were and — being from Montana — visits to family in the Big Sky State meant we kids were in the backseat for hours and hours across the open fields from one aunt or uncle’s house to another listening to the only thing on the radio: country western music. So even though I grew up in the Arizona suburbs as my friends were listening to grunge, mainstream hip-hop and the peak of boy bands and teen pop music, I knew all the words to “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You.” I knew “The House of the Rising Sun” as a Parton song long before I heard the more popular version by The Animals.

Parton still impacts me as a father: Inspired by her own father’s inability to read and write, Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995 for the children within her home county in Tennessee, sending free books monthly to children under the age of 5.

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true,” she states on the Imagination Library website. “I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

Parton soon expanded the program to the state, then nationwide and now to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the Republic of Ireland, gifting free books to children in five countries, currently totaling some 3,197,250 children. One only needs to sign up their child at their library or through a branch of the nonprofit. All three of my children signed up. Our twins get the same book every month, which helps when two 4-year-old twins will otherwise fight over any supposedly “shared” thing.

To date, the program has sent out 332,411,218 books to inspire a love of reading at a young age.

The program presents books to kids and gives children’s authors an unprecedented ability to connect with audi­ences they could never reach on their own. Parton’s photo and a description of the Imagination Library program are printed on the back flap of every book, so my kids are as familiar with Parton as they are Blippi, Bluey and Bingo or the Paw Patrol.

Parton also has a connection to Sedona. In June 2018, Herschend Family Entertainment, the co-owners and co-operators of Parton’s Dollywood, bought Sedona’s longtime Pink Jeep Tours and rebranded the company Pink Adventure Tours. The iconic Jeeps that roam Sedona trails are also around in the Smoky Mountains around her childhood home and theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

My friend Scott Woods, a slam poet and librarian in Columbus, Ohio, more eloquently encapsulates her broader cultural impact:

“… Dolly Parton was on almost everybody’s list. And even if I couldn’t name a Dolly Parton song — which I can — and even if I couldn’t name a Dolly Parton movie — which I can — and even if my mother wasn’t a Dolly Parton fan — which she is, and Sister Woods doesn’t do any secular music, amen — I would still have Dolly Parton on my list because she believed fiercely in books and reading and literacy. As a person who learned to love reading as a child and whose life is largely defined by literary arts, it is a mission I have the utmost respect for. Dolly Parton spent millions of dollars for many years delivering books to the doorstep of any child who signed up for her Imagination Library.

“As a writer, librarian and advocate for books and literacy at large, I mourn Dolly Parton’s lust for life and good, smart living. She could have poured her resources and name into anything. Among the many things she supported, she was unrelenting in her passion for the idea that being able to read, and actively doing so as a life practice, should be nurtured in everyone.

“Dolly Parton was a real one.”