You might recall that back in December we installed a Little Free Library in front of our house. To say it has been a successful and positive addition to the neighborhood would be an understatement. I love my LFL and really enjoy keeping it stocked and seeing how the neighborhood interacts with it.

I first learned of Little Free Libraries in 2014 and thought, I want one of those! Not only is the concept AMAZEBALLS but my neighborhood could really use some culture and interaction between people. Gah. I thought having one would make our street a better place to live. I thought maybe it would give me a chance to find out that I had something in common with the people around me. Because while we got along well with our next-door neighbors and across-the-street neighbors, there was pretty much no one else there whom we talked to or appeared to have anything in common with — or frankly, ever saw.

The bigger problem was that it wasn’t the right place for us to be living. We’d been there almost 13 years but hadn’t really been happy there for a long time. With no other kids in the area near our kids’ ages, with few adults in the area close to our age, with an hour-long commute each way each day, and with its being the suburbs (not our groove), we decided it would take more than a cute little house full of books to fix things. So we moved, and the LFL project got put off.

Fast forward to now. We live in a home that’s big enough, in the city, close to where we work and go to school, and have lots of neighbors we love with amazing kids who play with our kids. This is, for us, a happier place. So at the end of last year, we put up a Little Free Library, which my husband built.

It’s shaped like a tiny house — painted blue, because that’s one of my favorite colors — and has a roof painted and shaped like an open book. The doorknob is also shaped like a book, which he created on his 3D printer. The whole thing is so charming. And people come by often, sometimes more than once a week.

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Whenever I see someone stopping at the LFL, I come out to say hello. If I’ve never met them before, I tell them I’m the steward and ask what they like to read. And often they thank me for putting the LFL up and say that it’s been such a great addition to the neighborhood.

That’s all I’ve wanted, really — to make a positive contribution to my community. To get literature into more people’s hands. To make it easy for them to have the occasion to read more books. To put more books in front of people so they say, “Why not?” instead of “Maybe later.” I really think that society is better off when people have more good books to read — and read them.

Countless studies have shown that one of the best ways to cultivate empathy is to read fiction, and lots of it, from a young age. Connecting with a protagonist who isn’t like yourself and caring what happens to that character? That’s empathy. That’s what it looks like, that’s where it can start. And wow, do we ever need more empathy in the world — which sometimes feels like a giant raging dumpster fire, doesn’t it? I admit it’s hard to handle the firehose blast of bad news out there, especially right now. Things are sucking. But as this wonderful post from Heather over at Becoming Cliche reminds us, sometimes in addition to the political activism we engage in, what we have to do to combat the Big Ugly is to cultivate the Small Beautiful, over and over again, in concert with lots of other people, until that Beauty radiates outward and cleanses the rest with its light.

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I tend to rotate the stock for my LFL about once a week or so. So where do the books come from? A variety of places! Some of them are donated to me by authors and editors who are friends of mine, which is awesome! (By the way, authors who might be reading this, I’m happy to put your book in there if you want to send it to me. Leave me a note in the comments and I’ll get back to you.) I also have approximately more books than should be allowed by law in my own personal collection. And since I’ve been told only one room in our house may be an actual private library, I have to confine my books to what will fit on the shelves lining the walls in there, so…

I’m always acquiring new books, which means I have to let go of some of them from time to time. And whenever I end up with duplicates, the duplicates go to the LFL. And when our kids outgrow their books and want to pass them on? Boom, LFL. And when our library at school withdraws books and gives the withdrawn copies away, I go and reclaim as many as I can and share those with the LFL. And two of my colleagues — actually my kids’ own first-grade teachers — recently cleaned out their classroom libraries and gave me a carload of books for very young readers! (Thank you, Dana and Jenny!!!) Sometimes other colleagues and friends bring me books they’re happy to donate, too.

And one of the appeals of the LFL is that it’s a community project, really: the neighbors add books to it as well. They started doing this immediately. I’m so grateful for that and love it; the whole reason I wanted to start a Little Free Library was for the engagement. I love that the people here love my little book house.

So what’s in it? All kinds of things — lots of genres and lots of categories! I have noticed that children’s books are very popular, so I have them in all age ranges. MG and YA tend to get snapped up. Also most popular is adult fiction in all genres, especially mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy. We have poetry in there, a few plays, some books in other languages, and nonfiction. I have noticed that nonfiction doesn’t move quite as well as other stuff, so when that doesn’t get picked up for really long stretches of time, I tend to take it out and save it for later or sometimes donate it elsewhere. Now and then we even have a magazine or two in there.

Do you have any Little Free Libraries in your neighborhood? Tell us about them in the comments!