By: Lila Swedzinski
The first two years that Teresa Anderson had her Little Free Library, she kept a 50-page record of all of the books that were borrowed. The list came to 1,993 books.
Anderson’s Little Library, called “Book Club 101,” was a gift from her daughter. The box and wooden post are painted red and blue to match the trim of her house. While she initially used it to house the books that her book club had previously read, her friends in the club started giving her their books to put out as well. Soon enough, business was booming.
Anderson lives in the Chicago area, but Little Free Library is based in St. Paul, Minnesota, and its mission is worldwide. The nonprofit is dedicated to increasing book access and building community. According to their website, there have been more than 175,000 libraries built in 128 countries and 400 million books have been shared. On March 11, the organization unveiled their 200,000th Little Library at Benjamin E. Mays IB World School in St. Paul. Little Free Library received multiple awards over the years, including the Innovations in Reading Prize in 2013 from the National Book Foundation and the Library of Congress Literacy Award in 2015.
Whether it’s to honor a loved one or make space on a bedroom bookshelf, Little Free Library stewardship offers an outlet for people looking for a way to make connections and help out in their community. The mailbox-sized libraries can hold anything from a carefully curated book selection to non-perishable food items for all neighbors to enjoy.
Anderson had no plans of starting a book club back in 2010. After the club her husband took part in disbanded, a mutual friend hounded her for several years to start her own. Finally, she gave in and gathered five of her good friends to start, eventually growing the club to 11 members.
“We’ve lost some people, but we continue to gain people as a result of the Little Free Library,” she said.
Anderson recalls standing outside of her house one day restocking her Little Free Library when a couple that had recently moved in next door approached her to introduce themselves. The woman’s mother planned to live on the second floor.
“She said [her] mother is an avid reader,” Anderson said. “I said, ‘You need to tell her there’s a book club she needs to join.’” That’s how she recruited their newest member.
The club meets once a month, and the members alternate hosting a dinner at their homes for the occasion — oftentimes eating foods inspired by the book they were discussing that night. While they read mostly contemporary fiction books, they try to add in one nonfiction book every so often. Once a year, Anderson tries to slip in a book of short stories for her own reading pleasure. A few club favorites are “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry and “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride.
There are many Little Libraries in Anderson’s eclectic Wicker Park neighborhood for the community to visit. It didn’t take long for neighbors to add their own flare to her book selection.
“The people from the community have definitely mixed it up,” she said. “We have a lot of religious books that get put into the library and we have cookbooks. You wouldn’t believe how many cookbooks have gone through the library.”
Anderson attributes the influx of cookbooks to people turning to recipes online more often.
According to a 2022 study from the Pew Research Center, 30% of adults reported they had read an e-book in the past 12 months. That is an increase of five percentage points from their survey conducted in 2019.
However, younger generations continue to ground themselves in physical media and get more involved with their communities. Social media has shed light on new trends of younger generations showing more interest in physical media like books, CDs and vinyl records. According to a 2022 study out of Portland State University, 54% of the 2,075 Millennials and Gen Z surveyed had visited a physical library during the previous 12-month period.
Little Free Library gives everyone the opportunity to make material contributions in their neighborhood and revive their connection to physical books and media.
“Here Be Dragons”
Kelsey Binder’s mysterious Little Free Library in Minneapolis is a safe haven for books in the fantasy genre. It has a medium wood finish with images inspired by “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” decorated on one side, Hogwarts on the other and an image of the “Lonely Mountain” from “The Lord of the Rings” on the back. Binder purchased and put up her library in spring of 2022 with a previous roommate, and they wanted the simple illustrations to represent core, recognizable fantasy books.
The medieval phrase “Here Be Dragons” is what cartographers used to write on the edges of maps to represent unexplored areas. She believes it lends to the idea that fantasy is “what’s at the edge of the map” — allowing readers to explore unknown, exciting worlds.
Binder cites her experience as a student at the University of Minnesota as inspiration for wanting to put up her own Little Library since she would often admire them while exploring on campus and in the city. Another motivator for her was to have quality books accessible to people, which she thought some of the libraries lacked.
“I definitely felt like a lot of them do end up being just dumping grounds for not-good books,” Binder said.
Binder finds it best not to let her Little Library run itself. When she is less attentive, people leave stickers, masks, magazines and religious pamphlets. When she is more involved with curating the selection, Binder typically only keeps in books that she would personally recommend to others — leaving mostly fantasy while sprinkling in a few classics. Some of her favorite fantasy books include the “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling and the “Mistborn” series by Brandon Sanderson.
“My bookshelf over there is basically even split classics and fantasy,” Binder said. “I definitely will go for a good old John Steinbeck or something like that and be like, ‘I’m gonna inflict this on all of my neighbors and make them read that with me.’”
Gifting Change
Similarly to Teresa Anderson, retired nurse and Duluth native Jane Martin received her Little Free Library as a Christmas gift from her daughter in 2013. Being a student at the University of Minnesota at the time, Martin’s daughter was inspired by the Little Libraries she saw on campus and in the city. Martin loved the idea of sharing her books with the community via Little Library, especially since she belonged to a book club at the time.
She is currently a member of two book clubs, one of which is composed of her retired work friends from the ICU at Essentia Health – St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth. In the past, they met once a month to discuss the one book they were all reading. But for the last two months, they have been discussing the separate books they each read and exchanging them between members as they please. Her other book club is more structured. Run through the Nordic Center, the club meets October through May, and they primarily read books that have been translated into English from Nordic languages.
With memberships to three libraries in Duluth, Martin is no stranger to the appeal of reading on a budget. On the Little Free Library mobile app, she stated in her Little Library description her initial excitement about sharing books with others and going thrifting for new books to add.
Little Free Library operates through their website, but their mobile app is a convenient way to search for book-sharing boxes nearby. Users can search by location or name to explore the interactive map feature and stewards who have registered their library on the app can add descriptions for the public to read.
There are also tags that stewards can add on the app such as “Banned Books,” “Read in Color Library” and “Impact Library,” which convey to readers how the box can be used. Their Impact Library and Indigenous Library programs are dedicated to improving literacy rates through granting no-cost Little Free Libraries to communities in need. The Read in Color program, created after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, aims to center multicultural books with perspectives on racism and social justice to celebrate and amplify marginalized voices.
Although arriving at her house completely assembled, the Little Library still needed to be installed in her front yard with a base. Jane enlisted her father to help her put it up, and they got to work. However, the project was not without its renovations.
“About three years ago, the top piece got worn and was leaking, so my dad tore that off and made a shingled roof so it looks more like a little house,” Jane said.
When deciding on colors to paint her Little Library, Jane tapped into her Norwegian heritage and painted it a rusty, bright red and a teal blue. For an added flare, she had her friend, who is an artist, paint designs inspired by a traditional Norwegian folk art style called “Rosemaling.” Four years later, another friend of hers built a bench in the
same rusty red color that sits next to her Little Library for readers to enjoy in the spring, summer and fall.
Martin finds joy in dedicating the lowest shelf to children’s books.
“I can see my Library from my kitchen window, and it’s really sweet when I see children sitting there,” Martin said. “Kids have left things in there [like] little pictures and things for me, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you for your Library.’”
For all ages, stewarding, borrowing and replenishing books makes a tangible contribution and strengthens the community bond.
One story at a time.