2nd graders in Lexington and a Knott County senior replace books lost to Kentucky floods

Some Fayette County second graders and a high school senior in Knott County are partnering to replace books lost to flooding in Eastern Kentucky.

Brittany Phillips, principal at Lexington’s Dixie Magnet Elementary School, said second graders have been working on a project called “Pack Horse Libraries.”

The project began when teachers posed a prompt to the second graders: “The United States is facing a literacy crisis. Within the US, 2 out of 3 children living in poverty have no books to call their own. Eastern Kentucky is a place that has limited resources, and needs more reading opportunities.”

Students then worked to organize a book drive for Eastern Kentucky students, as well as install a little free library at the Dixie school campus.

Dixie students have collected more than 500 books to send to Eastern Kentucky in recent weeks. Some of those will go to students who lost books in last month’s devastating floods that swept across much of the region.

Students showcased some of those projects and more Tuesday night at a project-based learning expo at the school.

“Second grade teachers could not be more proud of the work these students have done,” she said.

One of the destinations for books collected at Dixie will be Knott County, about 2 1/2 hours east of Lexington, where a senior has developed a similar initiative.

Molly Sandlin, a senior at Knott Central High School who was named Miss Centurion at the school, named her project “Knotts Words of Wonder.”

“After the devastating flood in July 2022, our county lost almost everything, including every library. Both school and public libraries were completely destroyed,” she said. “As a result, children had hardly any access to literature unless they were fortunate enough to have books in their homes.”

Luckily, last month’s flooding didn’t damage Knott County’s school libraries, she said, but libraries are still recovering from flooding in 2022.

Sandlin said she has always believed that children’s literacy education is the most important thing a school can teach.

“My goal is to make books accessible to children again and inspire them to bring books into their daily lives,” Sandlin said.

This story was originally published March 4, 2025 at 7:10 PM.