If you’ve found yourself wishing for something that will calm your raging anxiety amid the coronavirus pandemic or simply another person to read your kids a bedtime story, Dolly Parton is here to help. The country legend and her soothing voice are launching a bedtime story YouTube series, Goodnight With Dolly, which will premiere its first episode on Thursday, April 2 at 7 p.m. ET on the YouTube channel for Parton’s Imagination Library.
A preview for the series sees Parton sitting in bed in her pajamas, a book and her glasses in her hand. “Hello, I’m Dolly Parton, the book lady from the Imagination Library,” she says. “I want you to join me April the second when I start Goodnight With Dolly. I’m gonna be reading some stories from the Imagination Library.”
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Rolling Stone reports that the series will feature new episodes every Thursday evening for the next 10 weeks in which Parton reads aloud from children’s books. Footage will include Parton and the interior illustrations of the books, which have been “carefully chosen for their appropriate content at this moment in time.”
“This is something I have been wanting to do for quite a while, but the timing never felt quite right,” Parton said in a press release. “I think it is pretty clear that now is the time to share a story and to share some love. It is an honor for me to share the incredible talent of these authors and illustrators. They make us smile, they make us laugh and they make us think.”
Selected stories include There’s a Hole in the Log on the Bottom of the Lake by Loren Long, Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney, I Am a Rainbow and Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, Pass It On by Sophy Henn, Stand Tall Molly Lou Mellon by Patty Lovell, Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen, Max & The Tag-Along Moon by Floyd Cooper, Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peรฑa and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper.
Parton launched her Imagination Library in 1995 to improve childhood literacy. The organization gifts children around the world with books and mails a free book to over 1 million children every month. A documentary on the library’s founding, The Library That Dolly Built, has been postponed from its theatrical release date of April 2 to the week of Sept. 21.
“Although it was the right thing to do, postponing the screening of our documentary was a disappointment,” Parton said. “So many of our Imagination Library affiliates had organized events around the nationwide screenings, however things do have a way of working out so the documentary will still have its day.”
Photo Credit: YouTube / Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
