09/02/2026
A Mighty Girl Pick of the Day: "Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics" by Dolly Parton. The first song Dolly Parton ever wrote, at the age of six, was an ode to her corncob doll Tasseltop. She was the fourth of twelve children in a two-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, singing before she could read and writing lyrics on scraps of paper her mother saved for her.
In the over seventy years since, she has written more than three thousand songs -- Jolene, 9 to 5, Coat of Many Colors, I Will Always Love You, and hundreds of others that people around the world know by heart -- built a business empire, opened a theme park in the mountains she grew up in, and funded a children's literacy program that has given away more than three hundred million books. "I may look like a show pony," she writes in this book, "but I'm a workhorse."
In "Songteller," Dolly walks her readers through 175 of her own songs, telling the story of where each one came from and what it meant to her. Illustrated throughout with hundreds of previously unpublished photographs from her personal and business archives -- childhood snapshots, sequined stage costumes, handwritten lyric sheets, backstage moments with everyone from Porter Wagoner to Emmylou Harris -- this New York Times bestselling memoir is at once an intimate self-portrait and a working songwriter's master class.
Dolly writes candidly about her painful split from Porter Wagoner, about the years she was underestimated as a woman in country music, and about the private grief and self-doubt that fed some of her most enduring songs. The result is a portrait of one of the most prolific songwriters in American music history, told in the only way that would ever do her justice: song by song, in her own words. Highly recommended for adult readers.
"Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics" is available at https://amzn.to/4xgl9ta (Amazon) and https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781797224732 (Bookshop)
For an uplifting picture book about her childhood growing up poor in rural Tennessee -- which helped spark her desire to help others -- we highly recommend "Coat of Many Colors" for ages 4 to 8, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/coat-of-many-colors
For more books to introduce kids to the extraordinary Dolly Parton, we recommend the picture books "Dolly Parton: Little People, Big Dreams” for ages 5 to 8 (https://www.amightygirl.com/dolly-parton-little-people) and "Dazzlin' Dolly" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/dazzlin-dolly), and the illustrated biography "Who Is Dolly Parton?" for ages 8 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/who-is-dolly-parton)
There is also a fascinating biography on her life and impact on working women, "She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived By Her Songs," at https://www.amightygirl.com/she-come-by-it-natural
