Наоми Критцер: Little Free Library

Meigan built her Little Free Library from a kit, because she wanted to make it into art. She sanded the wood and painted it with primer, then glued on the rocks she’d picked up from the Lake Superior shore over the summer and used acrylics to paint indigo swirls around them. When she mounted it on the post outside her St. Paul house, she decided to paint the post, too, and painted a fuchsia road, winding around the post to the box at the top, and outlined the road in smaller pebbles. There was a little bit of glitter in the fuchsia craft paint, and she decided that the book cabinet should have some of that, as well. Finally she screwed on the sign that said “Little Free Library” with the instructions: take a book, return a book.

Meigan had never seen a Little Free Library before she’d moved to St. Paul, but here, they were everywhere. Each Little Free Library was basically just a box of free books, sheltered from the weather. You could register them on a website. Sometimes people specialized in one type of books, or used the second shelf for a seed exchange. She was figuring she’d start by unloading the books she’d enjoyed but knew she’d never read again—she’d moved them up with her, but she didn’t have enough space and anyway, they were mostly just gathering dust. Passed along to someone else, they could be read and enjoyed and used.

She could see the Little Free Library from her living room window, and watched the first day as some of the neighborhood kids stopped to peer in. When she checked that afternoon, she noticed that Ender’s Game, Dragonsinger, and Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine had all been taken. The next day, someone had left a copy of The Da Vinci Code, which made her grimace, but hey, there were people who adored that book, so why not. She put in her extra copy of Fellowship of the Ring along with two Terry Pratchett books.

When she got up on Tuesday morning, the Little Free Library was empty. They did warn you on the website that sometimes people just cleaned it out, and she’d taken the time to stamp her own books “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” to hopefully discourage anyone from thinking they could re-sell them to a used bookstore. She heaved a frustrated sigh, re-stocked it with more books from the box she’d set aside, and after thinking about it, hand-wrote a note that people would see when they opened the library:

To whomever took all the books,

In the future, please take just one or two at a time, or consider leaving a book for others to enjoy. For now, I hope you enjoy reading the books you took! Please share them with others when you are done reading!

When she got home from work on Tuesday afternoon, someone had taken the copy of Pawn of Prophecy and on the top shelf of the Little Free Library, where Pawn of Prophecy had been, they had left behind a sanded piece of wood that on closer inspection she realized was a hand-carved whistle made from a twig. She took that inside and set it on her mantelpiece, and then put out Queen of Sorcery.

The next day, Queen of Sorcery was gone and someone had left behind a little metal figurine of a snake. It was very heavy, and reminded her of the antique lead soldiers that had been made as children’s toys but her parents stored on a high shelf as decorative objects, since lead is a terrible material for a child’s toy. She took it inside and put it next to the whistle, then set out the next book from The Belgariad.

For the next two weeks, the mystery borrower left things behind each day, some of it very strange: a small dark green bird’s feather that looked like it had been shed by a blackbird except for the color; a tiny clay vessel with a cork held in place with rust-colored wax; a carved stone animal too abstract to identify; a circlet of thin carved stone that was too big to be a ring and too small to be a bracelet; a hand-hammered safety pin.

These gifts were unnecessary but delightful. Meigan took pictures of them and sent the pictures in e-mail to her friends back home, two of whom ordered Little Free Libraries of their own to give away their own spare books. They reported back that these boxes turned out to be a great way to meet their neighbors and everyone thought they were very cool, but they had not been the recipient of feathers or carvings.

Then one day, on a page of brittle yellow paper that looked like it had been cut from one of the blank pages of an older paperback:

To the Librarian,

Is there a sequel to The Fellowship of the Ring? I would very much like to read it. I will leave behind anything I have for the other books, if you will give them to me. Also, I am sorry about the day I took everything. I promise I will never do this again. What would you like in trade for the next book about Frodo, if there is one?

It was written in ink, slightly blotchy, like the writer had used a dip pen but didn’t know quite how to write with it.

Right.

St. Paul had no shortage of artists and eccentrics. Maybe this could lead to a friendship with someone close by. Grinning to herself, Meigan pulled out The Two Towers from her box of books and slipped in a note. To the person who requested the next book about Frodo: leave me some art you have created and we’ll call it a good trade. ∼THE LIBRARIAN

There was no gift the next day, but the day after, a piece of paper (again, cut from the back of a paperback book, judging from the size) was left behind, rolled up and tied with a red thread. Meigan slipped off the thread and unrolled the paper. Done in the same slightly brownish ink as the letter, it was a line drawing of a cat.

This was really getting fun. Meigan wondered which of her neighbors this was. Another request should be coming soon: no one finishes The Two Towers and doesn’t want to read The Return of the King. In the meantime, she left out the next book from The Belgariad, a Valdemar novel, and a picture book about a small fire-breathing dragon’s trip to the dentist.

Sure enough, another note was left the next day: To the Librarian, Surely there is another book about Frodo? I have drawn you another picture but if you would prefer something else I can provide it. The person had drawn a picture of a leaf underneath the note. It looked like a maple leaf, with five lobes, but with additional hooks and spikes on the edges so it looked almost fractal.

To my correspondent, she wrote, please leave me a leaf like the one you drew.

She was expecting something cut out, maybe from paper, but it was a real leaf that got left in the place of Return of the King, green and fresh from the tree. It looked almost like a maple leaf, but… not. For extra weirdness, it was February; there weren’t any green, blooming trees in her neighborhood: it was gray and frigid and everything was blanketed with snow. But maybe… maybe they’d put a leaf in the freezer, or something. Or maybe the leaf had dropped off some sort of potted tree they kept in their house. Or maybe they’d picked it illicitly while visiting the St. Paul conservatory, which was filled with tropical trees…

She took a picture of the leaf and sent it to her friend back home with the botany hobby, to see if she could identify it. Her friend sent her back a slightly baffled message. It did look sort of like a maple, but not a variety of maple she was familiar with. She suggested that Meigan try the extension service at the U.

Instead, Meigan stashed it on top of her refrigerator and tried not to think about it. A fun correspondence with an artist playing a game was really all she wanted to imagine herself doing. But a day later, when she went outside to restock it… she left behind a copy of Defending Your Castle, which she’d bought because it looked hilarious but only ever skimmed through since she had no real intention of digging a moat around her house or installing ballistae.