A distant cousin to the idea of a one room school house, Little Free Libraries offer the gift of literacy, an opportunity to learn and a place to gather with like minded. As with any worthwhile community service endeavor, this literacy campaign reinforces a spirit of generosity and the reminder that a community can share. And with the words “Take a Book, Leave a Book,” the Little Free Library “book trading posts” delivers that message, and more immediately, complete satisfaction for the insatiable book browser, such as myself.
My husband and I discovered our first “pop-up library” in Point Dume on a Sunday morning constitutional. I clucked and he “ahhd” as we examined the street-side, basic two by four shelves that were nailed to a post in front of the neighbor’s house. There was a charter number indicating a legitimacy of some sort for the book bank, and a sign telling us to take or leave a book. A lending library, we immediately understood, and later learned this neighborhood book exchange program was the brainchild of a man who built the first book “noox” in front of his house in Hudson, Wisconsin. It was like a shrine to his mother, a schoolteacher who simply loved books.
Ingenious and old fashioned, local and charming, and a pure concept for book circulation, the idea has caught on with an estimated 5000 registered “Free Little Libraries” around the world. They serve as libraries where there are none, and they have replaced libraries where once there were. There’s a buzz about it: CNBC did a story on it and you can track GPS coordinates to locate one nearest you. Should you choose to build your own you can out of recycled materials, as so many others have, including old telephone booths, doll houses and car parts. I visualize one made out of surfboards, and epoxy, and I might call it “The Book Hut,” with an adjacent sign that would instruct all the kahunas to “Take A Book, Leave A Book.”
Back to the books: I randomly selected a novel by Mary Gordon that happened to have been inscribed by a long-time Malibu friend who died a few years ago. Her daughter told me that her mother did not believe in holding onto books, that she felt they should be shared. Hence she gave them away regularly as must have been the case with the one that has turned out to be my favorite summer read.
If I ever do build that Little Free (surfboard) Library, I might dedicate it to my longtime Malibu friend, and to her philosophy of sharing.
This column originally appeared on Alexis Deutsch-Adler’s blog, My Muse.