After being away at school for a few months, things looked a lot different at my local park. They redid the pavement, updated the playgrounds, and most intriguingly, added small wooden boxes throughout the path.
Next to each box was a small friendly sign that read: “Take a book, leave a book!” This stopped me in my tracks. When I went to look a little closer at the boxes, I found a small door, which opened to a stack of about five or six books. Some were hardcover, some paperback. Some were children’s books and others were 500-page novels.
There was no lock or coin slot on the box, so it seemed like these books were made to share. The strange wooden box allows curious readers to select a book from a small pool of random suggestions and replace it with their own favorite recommendations.
It turns out that these mini libraries have been growing in popularity. A simple Google Search would bring you a variety of options for these mini libraries, at a wide range of prices. The simple wooden structure could probably easily be recreated at home.
Not only does this adorable option encourage communities to read, it pushes people outside of their comfort zones, and introduces them to works that they may not have considered in the past. My favorite aspect of these “mini libraries” is their ability to tie communities together and spark conversations between people who share a space.
