Country music icon Dolly Parton has launched her children's literacy program in Australia.
The 68-year-old is in Melbourne to kick-off the Australian leg of her Blue Smoke tour.
Her Imagination Library literacy program, which helps 735,000 children in four countries every month, will be rolled out across Australia.
The program involves children being sent one free age-appropriate book a month until they are five-years-old.
Parton was one of 12 children in her family growing up in the East Tennessee mountains.
She started the Imagination Library because a lot of her own relatives didn't have the chance to go to school.
"My own father couldn't read and write," she said.
"(But) he was the smartest person I've ever known."
Parton said perhaps part of her life's purpose was to help the world's children.
"I don't have children so I've always felt like maybe God didn't mean for me to have children, so everybody's kids could be mine," she said.
Parton said one of her favourite stories is also the first book in the Imagination Library, The Little Engine That Could.
"I often refer to myself after all these years and kind of seeing my dreams come true, that I'm the little engine that did."
Parton created the Imagination Library in her hometown in the late 1990s and since then 56 million books have been sent to children across the US, Canada, Britain and now Australia.
The Dolly Parton Imagination Library is run in Australia by the charity United Way, in partnership with Rotary and Penguin Books.
Last year, the Imagination Library began in regional and suburban areas, including Ballarat and Portland in Victoria, North St Marys in NSW and Acacia Ridge, Queensland.
More than 4000 books were distributed in the first six months and it is hoped the Imagination Library rollout can help up to 40,000 families across Australia.
