Little Free Library

Recently I saw a "Little Free Library" in a local public park.  What is it you might ask?  It is an adorable, small house on a pole filled with books.  It operates on a "take one/leave one" premise.  I wasn't sure what it was all about but decided to look into it further when an article came out in our local paper about five of these that are now located in our county within public parks.  Ours contain a shelf with books for adult readers and another shelf for children's books.  The most recent little free library was worked on by about 15 children who raised money for the materials to build the library and then stocked it with books.  What a cool thing for these kids to be able to say, "We made this happen."

So where did the idea come from?  There is a site that tells the story about Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin who came up a way to create something that would pay tribute to this mother.  She was a school teacher who loved reading.   He built a small replica of a one room school house, mounted it on a pole in front of his house and filled it with books.  He affixed a sign that said "Free Books" and the neighbors and his friends loved it.  To read more, click here.

There are plans for making the house available online too.  To be part of the organization that started the idea, each little free library must have a steward to maintain it.  There is also a blog about the trials and rewards various libraries have endured and enjoyed respectively.

Reading about this got my mind going along the lines of these being placed near bus stops in low income areas for low income kids to benefit from and near low income elderly housing for the same reason.  Maybe a combination of these two groups of people (young and old) could become stewards together of a particular Little Free Library.  Would the young and the old learn to value each other more then?  I'd like to think so.

Here is an example of one of the libraries from the local newspaper story.