Dolly Parton’s Favorite Book

What childhood story convinced a poor girl from the Smoky Mountains that her dreams were worth chasing?

Composite image by author sourced from a public domain archive

Some celebrities recommend books because it makes them look smart. And then there’s Dolly Parton, who built an entire empire around one.

Most people think of Dolly as the rhinestone queen of country music. This woman wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” and, during the pandemic, read bedtime stories to the world’s children in her pajamas.

What you might not know is that underneath all the sequins and the big hair, there’s a woman who grew up in a one-room cabin in East Tennessee with eleven brothers and sisters, not much money, and even fewer guarantees.

In that world, her favorite book wasn’t just a story. It was a lifeline.

Dolly’s personal favorite is The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, and it is the very first book every child receives from her Imagination Library, which now sends out half a million copies every year.

The connection goes back to her earliest years. In her introduction to the book’s 90th Anniversary edition, Dolly wrote: “My memories take me way back to a little cabin in East Tennessee.”

This was not a place where dreams easily came true. Oftentimes, telling her about all of the things we couldn’t do rather than all of the things we could do. But her mother would read the story of the Little Engine to comfort and encourage her.

She also said this, in her own words, on the Give a Book platform:

“My favorite book of all time is The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper because it inspired me when I was just a kid and still inspires me today. I often say that little phrase over and over to help conquer my apprehensions or my nerves before I am about to launch into something that is just a little bit scary to me.”

— Dolly Parton

Image from Amazon as a reference

***The Little Engine That Could**

• by Watty Piper.

The story is deceptively simple. A long train loaded with toys and good things for children on the other side of a mountain breaks down. One by one, the big, important engines refuse to help — they’re too busy, too proud, or too tired. Finally, a small blue engine, the kind nobody takes seriously, agrees to try. And as she strains up the mountain, she repeats the only fuel she has: I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

She makes it.

That’s the whole story. No plot twists. No villain. Just a small engine that refused to accept “impossible” as an answer.

Take Away

Most people who grew up without much have a version of this story somewhere in their bones — a phrase, a song, a person who told them to keep going when the mountain looked too steep. For Dolly, it happened to come in a children’s book.

Her Imagination Library has now sent out over 200 million free books to children around the world, and The Little Engine That Could is the very first one every child receives — complete with a personal message from Dolly.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a woman who knows exactly which story changed her life, and decided that as many children as possible deserved to hear it too.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

— Albert Einstein, Source: The Times of India

© Copyright Jose Luis Ontanon, 2026

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