Love this! Will you "take one, leave one" this weekend?
A Little Free Library in Minneapolis on Dec. 25, 2012. The whimsical little boxes were first started by Todd Bol in Hudson, Wis., three years ago and have grown into a global phenomenon since then. (MPR Photo/Hart Van Denburg)
Little Free Library phenomenon started in Hudson, Wis.
December 25, 2012
STEVE KARNOWSKI
Associated Press
HUDSON, Wis. (AP) -- It started as a
simple tribute to his mother, a teacher and bibliophile. Todd Bol put
up a miniature version of a one-room schoolhouse on a post outside his
home in this western Wisconsin city, filled it with books and invited
his neighbors to borrow them.
They loved it, and began dropping by
so often that his lawn became a gathering spot. Then a friend in
Madison put out some similar boxes and got the same reaction. More
home-crafted libraries began popping up around Wisconsin's capital.
Three years later, the whimsical
boxes are a global sensation. They number in the thousands and have
spread to at least 36 countries, in a testimonial to the power of a good
idea, the simple allure of a book and the wildfire of the internet.
"It's weird to be an international
phenomenon," said Bol, a former international business consultant who
finds himself at the head of what has become the Little Free Libraries
organization. The book-sharing boxes are being adopted by a growing
number of groups as a way of promoting literacy in inner cities and
underdeveloped countries.
Bol, his Madison friend Rick Brooks,
and helpers run the project from a funky workshop with a weathered wood
facade in an otherwise nondescript concrete industrial building outside
Hudson, a riverside community of 12,000 about 20 miles east of downtown
St. Paul, Minn. They build wooden book boxes in a variety of styles,
ranging from basic to a miniature British-style phone booth, and offer
them for sale on the group's website, which also offers plans for
building your own. Sizes vary. The essential traits are that they are
eye-catching and protect the books from the weather.
Each little library invites passersby to "take a book, return a book."
Educators in particular have seized
on the potential of something so simple and self-sustaining.
In Minneapolis, school officials are
aiming to put up about 100 in neighborhoods where many kids don't have
books at home. A box at district headquarters goes through 40 books a
day, serving children whose parents come to register them and adults who
come to prepare for high school equivalency tests.
"I absolutely love them," said
Melanie Sanco, the district's point person on the effort. "It sparks the
imagination. You see them around and you want one. ... They're cute and
adorable." Kids who have books stay in school longer, she said.
Bol and Brooks, who runs outreach
programs at the University of Wisconsin, see the potential for a lot
more growth. At one point, they set a goal of 2,510 boxes -- surpassing
the number of public libraries built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
They passed that mark this summer.
The Rotary Club plans to use the
book boxes in its literacy efforts in the west African nation of Ghana.
Books for Africa, a Minnesota-based group that has sent over 27 million
books to 48 countries since 1988, recently decided to ship books and
little libraries to Ghana, too.
The groups are working with
Antoinette Ashong, a pro-literacy activist and headmistress of a girls'
school in the capital of Accra. "I want to spread reading in Africa,
which is a problem because in Africa it is very, very difficult to get
books to read," Ashong said in a Skype interview. She has already put up
45 boxes in poor neighborhoods.
Most of the nonprofit's money comes
from sale of pre-built little libraries, which cost from $250 to $600,
and a $25 fee to register a library on the organization's web site. The
AARP Foundation has also provided a $70,000 grant as part of a new
program to provide book boxes for seniors and kids to read to them.
Bol and Brooks recently began
drawing paychecks after several years of work as volunteers. Bol, the
full-time executive director, said he hopes to earn $60,000 a year
eventually, but added, "we're not there yet." The group will remain a
nonprofit, Bol said, but they want to develop stable revenue streams and
management systems so it can continue to grow.
"We are working very hard to get
close to making it financially viable, but it will be a while," Brooks
said. "What's encouraging is that every day people call us and they have
the most clever, interesting and sometimes moving ideas."
Sage Holben, who put up a Little
Free Library in her tough neighborhood near downtown St. Paul, said she
thinks it has made a positive difference. Although crime and violence
are common on the block, no one has vandalized the box or stolen the
books, and she routinely sees kids exploring the contents. She said she
asked one 8-year-old neighbor if she really intended to read a romance
novel she had taken.
The girl told her no, Holben said,
but ran her finger over the words as if following the text.
"I do this and I feel like I'm smart," the girl said.
沒有留言:
張貼留言