Thursday morning, Kindra called me with an odd question:
“Are there any newspaper racks at the office that don’t work?”
Turns out, there were a couple, including one that wasn’t reparable and was spending its days shoved into a corner.
So, a little later in the day, Kindra came to the office and helped load the rack into the back of my pickup.
She had decided to build a tiny library at our house and had been casting about for what to use.
She’d thought of a couple of ideas that she decided weren’t practical and had considered buying a display case before she had the light bulb moment with a newspaper rack.
If you aren’t familiar with tiny libraries, they are stands that people create and fill with a few books.
Anyone who wants one of the books can take it, and they can always drop off books they’ve read. Ideally, it would be a one-out, one-in kind of operation, with the number of available books staying about the same.
Her plan was to put the rack/library on the road at the end of our driveway.
The rack was in pretty good shape, except that the mechanism was broken that counted the quarters and allowed the door to open.
Kindra began sanding the rack on Thursday. I offered a few tips on wet-sanding metal that I had picked up as a teenager during those long, long hours of sanding cars in my dad’s body shop.
When I came home Friday, there was the library at the end of the driveway, painted teal instead of its previous purple and gold.
“Books to Share,” read the large scriped letters on the door.
It looked good, and best of all, it had a good first day of business.
People had taken two books and left two, so the ratio was working.
Kindra and the kiddoes were excited about the library and put a few of their books up for adoption. Kindra bought some others and accepted donations from family members.
They were a mix, ranging from children’s to true crime titles to Stephen King.
I tried not to be offended that she hadn’t put a copy of my book in her library.
Quite a few people walk on the road in front of our house, so Kindra is hoping they become regulars and help pass the word. She is a reader and a lover of words and hopes to share the passion with others.
Over the weekend she registered her library with a national organization of tiny libraries and hopes people see hers on a national registry.
It will be interesting to see how it goes this summer.