I’d like to clarify that this adorable little guy is NOT an art installation or some cute little advertisement. This is, in point of fact, a WORKING LIBRARY. You take a book you want, and in exchange you put another book in its place. These Little Free Libraries are bringing accessible reading material to poor inner city communities, rural areas, and places where there is not an otherwise easily accessible full library in nearby, and where many people cannot afford to purchase books of their own.

Reading and owning books is a privilege that many of us take for granted. In well-off families, a child may own 50 or more books of his or her own. In poor communities such as Watts in LA, a child may be lucky to own two books. Studies have proven (surprise surprise) that the best way for a child to learn to read is for them to have access to books they WANT to read. Learning to not only read but to enjoy reading empowers a child, teaches them now to learn and to WANT to learn. The simple act of providing interesting books to a child sets them up for a better life.

So keep an eye out for these Little Free Libraries, and donate a book if you can!

amandaonwriting:

My 15 Favourite Quotes On Libraries

1. It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. ~Elizabeth Kostova
2. An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them. ~Stephen Fry
3. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” ~David Foster Wallace
4. Madam, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan
5. The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night. ~Isabel Allende
6. My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn’t have any excuse to be stupid. ~Joan Bauer
7. Libraries are our friends. ~Neil Gaiman
8. Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too, that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence. ~Jan Morris
9. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~Jorge Luis Borges
10. She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people. ~Catherynne M. Valente
11. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I’ll be all right as long as there’s a lending library. ~Stephen King
12. What better place to kill time than a library? ~Diane Setterfield
13. The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library. ~Albert Einstein 
14. Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. ~Germaine Greer
15. [His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore. ~Ray Bradbury

Source: Writers Write

by Amanda Patterson

Image: Street Art Utopia