Everyone knows that Dolly Parton is amazing.

She has also been a huge advocate for literacy and has gone above and beyond in her commitment to giving children and schools access to books. Launched in 1995, her Imagination Library programme has a total of 1.9m children registered and it has, to date, gifted over 176m books. It gives out an average of 1m books a month to children, from birth to the age of five, in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia. Incredible.

She subsequently spun this off into Good Night With Dolly in 2020 where she posted videos of herself reading bedtime stories on YouTube.

She also has had a reasonably successful recording career. You might even have heard some of her songs.

Which is the long way round to set the stage for her latest literary endeavour. The novel Run, Rose, Run – which she created along with author James Patterson – has evolved to become what they are terming a “bookcast”.

It is, for now anyway, an exclusive on Spotify and sees the book broken down into a series of short audio chunks (anything from two minutes to 11 minutes), where a section is narrated and is interspersed with original music by Parton. New episodes are added weekly.

“When we wrote this book together, I felt I could contribute best by sticking to my first love, music,” said Parton in a statement on Spotify’s website. “James and I hope that listeners will be able to feel the connection between the book and the album as we work to bring this story and these characters to life, as only two storytellers can.”

There is also a tie-in soundtrack album that was released on 4th March and is described as “the first soundtrack for a novel”. Interestingly, the bulk of the bookcast was released ahead of the book itself, which was released on 7th March alongside the final six episodes of the bookcast.

“This unique audio experience exemplifies the limitless potential of audio and Spotify’s commitment to partnering with exceptional creative talent on new innovative formats,” said Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s chief content and advertising business officer.

It remains to be seen if other artists will follow her lead into the bookcast world; but then again not many artists have been ambassadors for literacy in the hands-on way she has.