Rarely does the death of any one person resonate so deeply and globally as that of Dolly Parton last week.

Instantly recognisable: the hair, the rhinestones, the unmistakable laugh, the beautiful voice that sang of heartbreak and pain.

A unique package that not only made people feel good, but changed lives through the good she did.

Yet how can it be that the loss of someone we never met can affect us so deeply? How can their passing seem so strangely personal?

It’s not as if she actually changed lives here in Dundee on the east coast of Scotland – all the way from Nashville.

Except, she did. She really, really did.

Dolly’s Imagination Library, founded in 1995, was inspired by her father, who couldn’t read or write, and by what she experienced growing up as the fourth of 12 children with no water or electricity in a one-room wooden cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Dolly Parton’s books ended up in Dundee libraries

It started in her childhood community, and by the time of her death, aged 80, the library had delivered more than 300 million books across five countries, with children receiving a carefully selected book every month from birth until the age of........

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