Three years ago, The Los Angeles Times published a feel-good story on the Little Free Library movement. The idea is simple: A book lover puts a box or shelf or crate of books in their front yard. Neighbors browse, take one, and return later with a replacement. A 76-year-old in Sherman Oaks, California, felt that his little library, roughly the size of a dollhouse, “turned strangers into friends and a sometimes-impersonal neighborhood into a community,” the reporter observed. The man knew he was onto something “when a 9-year-old boy knocked on his door one morning to say how much he liked the little library.” He went on to explain, “I met more neighbors in the first three weeks than in the previous 30 years.”
There aren’t a lot of things one individual can do to help bring people together, and what is possible are usually “small” things. Once upon a time, though, someone told me that the world is seldom changed by sweeping, powerful blows from a sledgehammer. More often than not, real and long-lasting change comes from repeated blows from a rubber mallet, the sort of hard, laborious work that chips slowly away at the rock you’re trying to remove until finally you realize what it was meant to be all along.
Erin and I are moving into a new house on Friday, and one of the first things I’d like to do is to put up a Little Free Library box. I’ve seen a few scattered throughout Portland, and I’ve always wanted to do something that spreads something positive, in whatever small way I may be able to do so. The Little Free Library movement began with one man in Wisconsin in 2009; since then it’s spread all over the world. Books aren’t necessarily going to save the world, but they can help change it, even if it means tinkering around the margins. I love the idea of being part of that, and it’s one of the things I look forward to bringing to my new neighborhood.
Unfortunately, some folks aren’t nearly so sanguine about the idea of people spreading literature to the masses.
Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things.
Last summer in Kansas, a 9-year-old was loving his Little Free Library until at least two residents proved that some people will complain about anything no matter how harmless and city officials pushed the boundaries of literal-mindedness:
The Leawood City Council said it had received a couple of complaints about Spencer Collins’ Little Free Library. They dubbed it an “illegal detached structure” and told the Collins’ they would face a fine if they did not remove the Little Free Library from their yard by June 19.
And it’s not just in suburban Kansas City. Unfortunately, there’s a growing trend- people who feel that a Little Free Library is somehow a threat to the established public order. In places like Los Angeles and Shreveport, Louisiana, people and local government are falling back on zoning ordinances to attack Little Free Libraries as illegal and unauthorized structures.
Because Lord only knows the threat free books can pose to public safety, right?
To protest the shutting down of a Little Free Library on Wilkinson Street, artist Kathryn Usher placed a stack of books on a wooden block outside her Dalzell Street home. A sign reading ‘Free Range Books Take One Leave One’ hangs above it. Her action was in response to a notice a Little Free Library’s owners, Ricky and Teresa Edgerton, received from the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s zoning division—a request they cease operating it because the book swap violates city zoning law. If not, they risked further action if the matter were sent to the city attorney. “I did it in solidarity with Ricky,” Usher said. “I’m basically telling the MPC to go sod off.”
Common sense eventually carried the day in Shreveport, though it never should have been necessary for things to reach that point. How small must a person be in order to sincerely feel that a Little Free Library poses a threat…to anything? A free book exchange is a great way to bring people together and expose them- especially children- to books and ideas they might not otherwise be exposed to…and perhaps that’s the problem.
I can hardly wait to put up my own Little Free Library. Being that this is Portland (and zoning laws here aren’t enforced on pain of death as in some municipalities), I suspect it will be greeted with open arms. Who knows; I might even get to meet a few of my new neighbors I might not otherwise encounter. And how can bringing people together be anything but good?
