Got books? Little libraries offer more than summer reading

Cade Newman, 2, reaches for another book as his mother, Meghan, reads to his brothers Finn, center, and Chase at the Little Free Library on Lorelie Drive in Sabattus. Meghan Newman and her boys walk from their home to the library at least once a week. Nancy St. Pierre, not pictured, fills her little library with books for adults and children, but mostly with books for kids “because most of my customers are children,” she said.

SABATTUS — At least once a week — often more — Meghan Newman and her sons, 4-year-old Chase and 2-year-old twins Cade and Finn, walk to the library before lunch.

It’s just down the street from their Lorelie Drive home and the closer they get, the more excited the boys get. The fact that the library is little more than a large mailbox with a window doesn’t faze them or their mother at all.

“Every neighborhood should have one,” Newman said.

Nancy St. Pierre created Nancy’s Little Free Library at the edge of her Lorelie Drive property in Sabattus two years ago. Today it’s a kind of reading oasis with a stone path, garden bench and a weather-proof book box built to look like a house with a red door and shingled roof.

Although the box can puzzle newcomers who wander by, its instructions are simple: Take a book now. Leave a book later. (It doesn’t have to be the same book.)

In a town with no public library, “This is the Sabattus library,” St. Pierre said.

“There are many young families with children and the kids just think it’s the greatest thing,” she said. “They feel like they’re going to the library.”

They aren’t alone.

Eight years after the Little Free Library movement started in Wisconsin, Maine has well over 100 book exchanges officially registered with the national nonprofit. Dozens of others are unregistered, working all on their own.

A Brunswick dentist has a book exchange. Governor’s Restaurants have three. Soon, all schools in Auburn will have one.

They’re in quiet neighborhoods and on city streets, run by community groups or individuals who just love books.

And more are coming — even from people who make a living selling books, not giving them away.

“The sense of building community through reading is something we’re totally committed to at the store,” said Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney, Doak and Garrett Booksellers in Farmington.

Take a book, share a book

The Little Free Library movement started in 2009 with Todd Bol in Hudson, Wisconsin. In honor of his mother, a longtime teacher who loved to read, he built a model of a one-room schoolhouse, filled it with books and set it up in his front yard.

Book exchanges were nothing new, but the cute little neighborhood library quickly attracted attention. With help from Rick Brooks, a continuing studies manager at University Wisconsin-Madison, the idea soon took off.

By the end of 2011, there were nearly 400 little libraries in existence. A year later there were over 4,000.

Today, there are more than 50,000 in all 50 states and about 70 countries. At every Little Free Library, visitors are encouraged to take — and keep — a book for free. Visitors may drop off a book later, but it doesn’t have to be the same book.

“It’s interesting where (Little Free Libraries) pop up. Every place from Pakistan to Brazil to Australia to South Korea,” said Margret Aldrich, who literally wrote the book on Little Free Libraries in 2015 and is now program manager for the nonprofit.

Little Free Library stewards can create their own weather-resistant book box or buy one from the nonprofit. They can register their box with Little Free Library or not, as they see fit, but registered boxes may be placed on Little Free Library’s searchable world map, which brings more visitors.

In Maine, there are 111 little libraries on the map. Many are clustered in the Bangor, Brunswick and Portland areas, with other boxes scattered throughout the state.

Betty Krise started hers on Alfred Street in South Portland about two years ago to honor her husband, Raymond, an avid reader who died from a heart problem.

Coast Maine Pediatric Dentistry installed one outside its Brunswick building a few years ago and took it along when the office moved to a new location around the corner last year.

Governor’s Restaurant and Bakery put up three in the past year: one in Bangor, one in Old Town and, last week, one outside its Lewiston restaurant.

Sandra Hilton registered and mapped two little libraries in Durham when she and her special education students built them four years ago. The popular boxes now sit on public property at the old town hall and the Eureka Community Center.

“Although they’re small, they’re marvelous for this type of area because kids are able to get out and get books, and adults and older people are able to get out and find something to read,” Hilton said. “And of course being a special ed teacher, that’s really important to me, that people read.”

Today, her book boxes are filled with cookbooks, do-it-yourself books, magazines and novels.

“Even after four-plus years, people are still really, really using it. It shows me what the kiddos did had a lasting effect on the community. Even in the winter we see the books turning over,” Hilton said.

Other Maine book exchanges aren’t registered as Little Free Libraries — the $40 fee each can be a deterrent and registration isn’t mandatory — but they do the same job.

The Auburn School Department began putting up little libraries five years ago as part of a summer project with kids in the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, though registering them was deemed too costly. It now maintains about a dozen, including one at Gifford’s Famous Ice Cream in Auburn and one at the Boys and Girls Club in Auburn.

When it adds two more this summer, every school in the city will have one.

“A couple of them are right in front of the front doors, so they’re very visible. A couple of them are on the playground, so it’s a playground option for kids,” said Luci Merin, Community Learning Center director. “The idea does work. People do take a book. It’s pretty cool.”

‘It got bombarded’

Little libraries can hold a handful of thick volumes or dozens of thin children’s books, depending on the size of the box and how many shelves it has. Sometimes, popular boxes are crammed so full that visitors stack books on top of each other, sliding them in sideways and slanted.

St. Pierre’s Sabattus library is one of the popular ones.

“I started thinking this was going to be easy to keep track of,” she said. “I started listing all the books by name and author, by date I put them in the library. It got bombarded.”

Although visitors are welcome to keep the books they borrow, St. Pierre and her 8-year-old granddaughter stamp every volume with “Nancy’s Little Free Library” so they’re less likely to be sold. St. Pierre decorates the box for Halloween and stocks it with Christmas books in July since the little library is often plowed under come winter.

To keep her selection fresh — most of her visitors are neighborhood kids and families who stop by a lot — she rotates books in and out. She likes to stock seasonal books and stories about bugs, the seashore and other kid-favored topics.

“I guess that I change out 40 to 50 books each week,” she said.

Other stewards are just as passionate but less involved in day-to-day operations.

Anne Kemper — a Lewiston Public Library trustee — put up a Little Free Library in front of her Lewiston home on Pettingill Street two or three years ago. Her daughter had one where she lived in Rhode Island and Kemper loved the idea so much that her husband gave her a book box for Christmas.

She seeded the library with books at the beginning, but it’s been a while since she’s had to pump up the stock.

“It just has a lot of walk-by people,” Kemper said. “People drive by and check it out. I’ve see a UPS guy stop and run across the street and take a book out. It has a life of its own.”

Kemper’s visitors are good about leaving books that are family-friendly enough for any public library. On one recent morning the box was filled with about 20 items, including the fourth edition of an Alcoholics Anonymous manual, a Jodi Picoult novel and a John Grisham audio book.

“I like it because it’s sort of a fun, neighborly thing to do,” Kemper said.

Visitors say that’s why they enjoy them, too.

Dora Mills, the former Maine public health director and current vice president for clinical affairs at the University of New England, likes the book exchange in Tranten’s market in Farmington — one of eight in Farmington and Livermore Falls set up by Literacy Volunteers of Franklin and Somerset Counties. More than a box, Tranten’s exchange features a bookcase stuffed with books and a table with a couple of chairs so visitors can lounge and read.

Mills was so enamored that she snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook when she first encountered the spot.

“It’s a little nook that anybody can use,” she said. “I just thought when I saw it several years ago, ‘What a wonderful idea.’ Because who amongst us hasn’t finished with a book and thought, ‘Gee, I should just give it to somebody.’ Despite the fact we have three fabulous bookstores in Farmington, I think it provides a niche that was not met.”

At least one owner of a Farmington bookstore agrees. It’s why he’s starting some little libraries of his own.

Coming soon

As owner of Devaney, Doak and Garrett Booksellers, Brechner gets a lot of advance copies of books before they’re released. He can’t sell them, but he can give them away.

Brechner is working with the Mt. Blue school system to set up little libraries at several of the region’s schools. He’d like the boxes to be made by high school students in the local vocational program. Kids who borrow the books would be encouraged to write reviews that would be posted online for other students.

He’d like to have the little libraries built and open this coming school year.

“It’s just great for everyone,” he said. “It’s doing something we all want to do, which is share the love of reading.”

One town over, the Wilton Free Public Library is installing three book boxes in public parks next week, all of them in memory of Pete Chamberlain, who ran the library’s perpetual book sale before his death last fall.

Library Director Jennifer Scott doesn’t see the little libraries as competition for the traditional public library. She sees them as complementary.

“You walk up to it any time of day and select something to read. How cool is that?” she said. “Our library is very centrally located, but we know that there are readers, kids in particular, who can’t get to our physical building. So if we can get books in their hands by taking our libraries to the parks, that serves many purposes.”

In Lewiston, husband-and-wife teachers Matthew Campbell and Julie McCabe are looking into putting a little library downtown, not far from the Lewiston Public Library. Possibly in the tree streets area. Possibly filled with young adult books.

“We were (partially) inspired by the new container gardens that were put on Lisbon Street recently. They’re creating a welcoming vibe there,” McCabe said.

Also inspiring: Those garden containers have generally escaped vandalism. It gives the couple confidence that a little library can survive in the middle of the city without being broken, stolen or painted.

“I guess (vandalism) is always a possibility, but I’m not too worried about it,” Campbell said.

He may have a reason to be confident. Nationally and locally, Little Free Libraries usually stay safe. In Auburn, for example, only one of the school system’s dozen book boxes has been vandalized.

Proponents say little libraries are welcomed.

“People like reading. People like sharing books. And people like a neighborhood activity,” Kemper said.

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“We love reading,” said Anne Kemper of Pettingill Street in Lewiston. Kemper said she and her husband, Steve, started their Little Free Library “as a way to exchange books with our neighbors.” Kemper said she put some books in the library to get started three years ago, but now she does not need to. “It literally runs itself,” she said.

“It’s doing something we all want to do, which is share the love of reading.”

— Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney, Doak and Garrett Booksellers in Farmington

“It just has a lot of walk-by people. People drive by and check it out. I’ve see a UPS guy stop and run across the street and take a book out. It has a life of its own.”

— Anne Kemper, Little Free Library steward in Lewiston

“There are many young families with children and the kids just think it’s the greatest thing. They feel like they’re going to the library.”

— Nancy St. Pierre, Little Free library steward in Sabattus

Nancy St. Pierre fills her little library with books outside her home on Lorelie Drive in Sabattus. St. Pierre’s husband, Phil, built the library with leftover material from when their house was built. St. Pierre’s daughter, Katie, and son-in-law, Steve, planted the garden around the library for Mother’s Day.

The Wilton Free Public Library is installing three book boxes in public parks next week, all of them in memory of Pete Chamberlain, who ran the library’s perpetual book sale before his death last fall. The boxes were decorated with children’s handprints, including handprints from Chamberlain’s grandchildren.