By Karen Parr-Moody
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Tenn. – The wooden structure looks like a birdhouse for the luckiest of birds. But this red construction atop a post in Sango is actually a miniature library.
From a distance, this curbside library arouses curiosity among the neighborhood’s walkers and joggers. But up close, one sees a description painted across the top of the box: Little Free Library.
On the inside of a clear door is a note entitled “Calling All Readers,” which explains the rules, which are simple: take a book, leave a book.
Fittingly, this library was founded by Ellen Taylor, who was a librarian with the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System for 18 years.
“It’s a book swap, really,” Taylor says. “You’re supposed to take a book and leave a book.”
Taylor was inspired by a nonprofit organization called Little Free Library, which encourages such community projects nationwide and globally (www.littlefreelibrary.org). It began in 2009, when Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, built a tribute to his mother, a former school teacher and bookroom. He designed it to look like a red, one-room schoolhouse. Then he affixed it to a post in his front yard, tucked books inside and attached a sign that read “free books.”
Taylor’s husband, Dave, built the Little Free Library for her as a Christmas gift./contributed photo
Taylor asked her husband, Dave, to build her a Little Free Library as a Christmas gift. He visited www.littlefreelibrary.org/builders to get a design blueprint.
Taylor says, “He decided on a design and went to Lowe’s about five times – at least – and spent about $60 each time, it seems like it.”
The result was a darling structure to suit Taylor’s needs.
“I sure love it,” Taylor says. “It looks like a little, red schoolhouse. It’s really cute; he did a great job.”
Taylor considers the Little Free Library a great idea for several reasons.
“I’m always trying to match books to people and I can’t keep my books or I would be awash in books,” Taylor says. “So I thought that maybe this would be a good way to organize a book swap with neighbors.”
Initially she put in books that she and her husband had read.
“Now they’re all different books, because people have taken those and put different books in,” she says.
Eventually Taylor would like to have a literary club in which book borrowers discuss what they have been reading from the little library. But regardless of what the future brings, Taylor has already achieved her main goal – “to share the love of literature” with her neighbors in Sango.
This “Books in the Pines” library model is sold through www.littlefreelibrary.org for those who want to start a Little Free Library but don’t have the time or ability to build one./contributed photo
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.