Planting Seeds"Lyrics and Literacy"
I have always loved Dolly Parton (and I always will).
Growing up, my mom joked that she was Dolly Parton with her blonde curly hair and my dad was Kenny Rogers with his beard. I grew up listening to Dolly’s music, including her songs with Porter Wagoner and her Christmas CDs. Last year, I was able to visit Dollywood with my cousin and his family. I recently bought Dolly Parton’s new line of frozen dinners (beef pot roast was the best), her brand of perfume and lipstick, her baking mixes (I loved her cornbread), and I just found out about her line of $200 jeans called Dolly’s Joleans.
Although I like her music and her cornbread mix, what I like the most about Dolly is her good-heartedness and giving nature.
In February, the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital was renamed the Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital, and it is a free-standing, independent, not-for-profit pediatric health care system certified by the state of Tennessee as a Comprehensive Regional Pediatric Center.
She has also helped Tennessee wildfire victims in 2016 and Tennessee flood victims in 2021, donated $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation for Hurricane Helene relief in 2024, donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and funds numerous scholarships.
However, one of Dolly’s most renowned charitable acts is the creation of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which she founded in 1995. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides free books to children from birth until age 5. Her program has distributed more than 200 million books to children around the world. According to her foundation’s website, the childhood literacy program “gifts over 3.4 million books per month to children across the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia and the Republic of Ireland.”
Literacy is still an issue in today’s modern world. According to the National Literacy Institute, as of 2024-2025, approximately 79% of U.S. adults are considered literate, while 21% – about 43 million people – possess low English literacy skills. 54% of adults read below a 6th-grade level, and the country ranks 36th in literacy globally. According to Illinois Report Card, 43% of Chicago Public School students in third through eighth grade read at grade level in 2025.
Literacy levels are relevant not only in school, but throughout life. Reading and comprehension skills are needed to understand instructions, read legal documents, for recipes, and nearly every job. Being a good reader helps with critical thinking, analyzing, summarizing, and inferring information.
Reading is important when it comes to learning about agriculture as well. Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom (IAITC) has compiled a list of ag-accurate book recommendations on their website: https://www.agintheclassroom.org/teacher-resources/book-recommendations/
IAITC created a companion brochure with iRead’s summer reading theme, “Plant a Seed, Read.” The brochure spotlights 11 ag-accurate books and pairs a hands-on activity and lesson plan with each book and can be found on IAITC’s website, www.agintheclassroom.org.
As the school year is winding down and summer reading is starting, remember to stay literate! Read a book, a magazine, or a newspaper. Read a book together with a child, share a book with an older relative, recommend a book to a friend. And don’t worry if you’re not a reader – start small, read something short, and keep at it. After all, in the words of Dolly Parton, “You never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try.”
If you’re looking to support a local nonprofit that supports agricultural literacy, please think of donating to the Cook County Farm Bureau Foundation. The Foundation supports charitable, literary, leadership training, and educational work in agriculture in the Cook County area. The Foundation's key programs include “farm, food & agriculture” related scholarships for members/dependents pursuing higher education, internships, sponsorships of various agricultural literacy programming activities in the County for youth, and adult agricultural leadership and education scholarships. For more information or to make a tax-deductible donation, call 708-354-3276.