Dolly Parton's life and the desire to save children from the tyranny of the screen

Flowers and notes left outside Dolly Parton's house in Brentwood, Tennessee, on August 26, 2026. [AFP]

Many people have written to eulogise Dolly Parton as a great musician. But besides her music, Dolly Parton had a special relationship with books. This is perhaps one of the most personal and revealing parts of her legacy. For her, books were never simply about education. They represented a way out of the limitations of poverty. That is of interest to me. Let me explain.

It all began with her father, a hardworking man who, without ever learning to read or write, somehow managed to raise 12 children — a rather impressive achievement in itself! I suspect her father’s inability to read and write stayed with Dolly. That is why, when she became successful, she wanted to do something that would give children the opportunities her father never had. In 1995, she created Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee. The idea was simple: send a child one free, carefully chosen book every month, from birth until the age of five, regardless of the family’s income. Dolly wanted children to fall in love with books.

The Imagination Library was not a physical library building. Instead, Dolly essentially imagined turning every child’s home into a little library. What an idea! Does it surprise you that the flag of the most powerful country in the world will fly at half-mast for a week in honour of an artist?

Dolly’s life has inspired me to reflect on something I have observed in recent times. Being a writer of children’s literature, I find myself watching modern children, especially those from relatively affluent homes, with a mixture of curiosity and concern. Give a child a phone or tablet and something interesting often happens. Their attention can become almost absolute. Their eyes follow every movement. They swipe, tap, laugh and move on to the next thing with remarkable speed.

But place a book in front of the same child and the response can be very different. Within a few minutes, there is restlessness. The child looks around and asks how many pages are left. They reach for the phone. What seemed effortless a moment earlier suddenly feels like work. The phone and tablet are babysitting our children and shaping the way they experience attention. The results are not particularly encouraging.

I often wonder about this difference. Is it that children no longer like reading? Or have they gradually become so accustomed to instant stimulation that the quietness of a book has become difficult to tolerate? Let me peel the scales from your eyes.

Reading asks something different from a child. A book does not flash before a child’s eyes or constantly offer a new image or reward. A book requires a child to remain still, to follow a thought, to imagine what cannot be seen and to stay with a story even when nothing dramatic is happening.

That kind of concentration does not always come naturally, especially to children growing up in a world designed to compete relentlessly for their attention. Reading is, in many ways, a lesson in discipline and concentration. This is why the conversation about children and digital gadgets should not simply be about taking phones and tablets away. The bigger question is what we are helping children develop. A child who spends hours watching short videos is concentrating on something that has been carefully designed to hold their attention. Digital platforms are remarkably good at giving us one thing after another before we have time to become bored.

Books work differently. A book does not chase the reader. The reader has to choose to stay. And that is precisely why reading is valuable. There is something quietly powerful about a child sitting with a book and becoming absorbed in a world that exists only in words. They learn to wait for the story to unfold. They encounter unfamiliar words and ideas. They picture characters in their minds and make connections. They experience the satisfaction of sustained attention.

Let us learn from Dolly Parton and protect this skill. I think we sometimes make the mistake of turning reading into another obligation. We tell children they must read for thirty minutes and ask them how many pages they have completed. We test them afterwards to make sure they understood the story. This is not a good approach. Let us begin with small things. Ten or fifteen quiet minutes may be enough. The important thing is consistency.

Let us also remember that it is difficult to persuade a child to put away a device when the adults around them are constantly checking theirs. Children notice what we do far more than they listen to what we tell them. If we want children to read, perhaps they need to see us reading. That is how reading becomes less of an assignment and more of a habit. The first goal should be to create readers.

We should also be careful not to suggest that every encounter with a gadget is harmful. Technology is now part of children’s lives. There are educational programmes, audiobooks, creative applications, documentaries and countless useful resources available through digital devices. The answer, therefore, is unlikely to be a complete rejection of technology. The real challenge is balance. We need to help children learn that a screen is one way of spending their time, not the only way. They need opportunities to be bored, to play, to talk, to go outside, to draw, to build things and, importantly, to sit quietly with a book.

Before you accuse me of fighting digital gadgets, let me be clear. This is not a battle between books and gadgets. It is a question of what kind of attention we want children to develop. We live in a world that will constantly compete for their attention. There will always be another notification, video, game, headline and another reason to look at a screen. Teaching a child to read is therefore about more than academic achievement. It is also about teaching them how to slow down.

My plea to parents and teachers is that we should learn from Dolly Parton. Let us place books in the hands of children and encourage them to read. Do not be proud because your child can play all the games on your gadget. That is hardly something to celebrate. Let us be proud when our children can sit quietly with a book, or when they can finish a story without reaching for a screen.

The greatest danger may not be that our children are using technology. It is that we may be raising a generation that finds silence unbearable, patience unnecessary and sustained attention almost impossible. And that is a price no parent should willingly pay. I suspect Dolly Parton knew this too well.