Some low-income Lexington kids have a library at home. Meet the woman behind that.

Volunteer Diane Arnson Svarlien has a simple idea to help kids at a struggling Lexington school: Read to them and give them free books to help them build libraries at home.

In Kentucky, whose rank in fourth grade reading in the nation has fallen from eighth in 2015 to 29th this year, according to recent legislative testimony, Arnson Svarlien has been going to William Wells Brown Elementary and reading to kids after school and giving them books to take home.

She is joined by other volunteers who share her love of reading aloud.

Arnson Svarlien has gotten to know many of the children at William Wells Brown Elementary School and what they are interested in so she can order books they are seeking, whether it’s a particular book or series or specific topics, such as football or elephants

William Wells Brown Elementary moved from the lowest ranking in Kentucky’s school accountability system in 2021-2022 to the next lowest in 2022-2023.

Arnson Svarlien is trying to make a difference with books and reading.

When Kentucky schools’ in-person learning closed in 2020 because of the pandemic, the reading program became a book-giveaway program.

Arnson Svarlien and other volunteers would sit outside the front entrance of the school once a week, on the day when free lunches were distributed, with boxes of books on display. Parents and kids who came to pick up lunches could also pick up books. Students came back into the building before volunteers were allowed to, so post-COVID, the book giveaway continued outdoors, at dismissal time and during the after-school program.

“Jill Chenault-Wilson, the director of the WWB Community Center, took us under her wing, and she continues to provide essential logistical support for the program,” Arnson Svarlien said. “Volunteers are now allowed inside the building, which makes it easier to run the program, in the winter months especially.”

Chenault-Wilson said they’ve worked on a goal together to offer books to students who normally would not have access to books at home to read

“Her program has made that possible to so many students,” Chenault-Wilson said.

In 2023, the initiative- named KidsBooksLex — became an official nonprofit public charity.

KidsBooksLex is now dedicated to improving the well-being of Lexington’s young people—especially of kids from low-income households—by distributing free books and promoting the joy of reading, said Arnson Svarlien.

“We donate books to Central Music Academy in Lexington as well as WWB, and we have ambitions to expand our outreach,” she said. “In the 2023-24 school year we went to WWB about once a month at dismissal time, and also hosted book giveaways at special Community Center events,” she said.

In her view, reading is a life skill as well as a foundational academic skill.

“We have seen how our own lives have been transformed by reading, from the pleasure of being immersed in a fictional world, to the understanding of human life that we glean from both fiction and nonfiction, to the sense of civic competence that we gain from being informed about current events,” she said.

“We want all kids to have these advantages.”

The program has received grant support from the Society for Classical Studies to buy books about the ancient world and the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. People who want to help can reach Arnson Svarlien at kidsbookslex@gmail.com ., she said.

“Kids who don’t read well may think of reading as work, punishment, or simply a thing that they don’t like or are incapable of; our agenda is for kids to think of books as a source of pleasure and entertainment,” Arnson Svarlien said.

”The ability to read, and all of the essential academic skills that flow from it, begins with the love of books.”

“Despite its struggles, WWB is a vibrant place full of kids who are eager to learn,” she said. “In the book giveaway, we continue to stress pleasure and accessibility, offering books that kids will be excited to have.”