{"id":142360,"date":"2025-10-24T08:49:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/142360\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:49:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:49:33","slug":"my-free-little-library-is-a-connection-to-my-neighbourhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/142360\/","title":{"rendered":"My free little library is a connection to my neighbourhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Person<\/a> is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca\/essayguide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Illustration by Rania Abdallah<\/p>\n

The people pause to look. Sometimes they walk past, then stop, turn around and return. Sometimes they cross from the other side of the street.<\/p>\n

From our second-floor window, I watch the visitors to our little library box. At the front of our garden on our central Toronto street, the box offers hope of a treasure for passersby \u2013 a beloved classic to read again, new inspiration, a mental challenge or just something to bring joy to their day. <\/p>\n

Neighbourhood libraries \u2013 front-yard cupboards where strangers can leave and take books \u2013 have become so ubiquitous in Toronto that it is hard to remember a time when they didn\u2019t exist, though the Little Free Library non-profit says the first was built in 2009 in Wisconsin. For me, they\u2019ve always felt whimsical and I\u2019ve never passed one without stopping to look. I\u2019ve picked up books in libraries across the city, in Kingston and even in Whitehorse. Sometimes there are great finds, quite often there aren\u2019t, but what matters is the possibility. <\/p>\n

When we were planning to buy our first house two years ago, I knew I wanted a library for free books and the aforementioned whimsy. I snapped up a box in April from a giveaway group online before I actually had a yard to put it in. My husband thought I was mad since we weren\u2019t closing on our new house until June, but it felt right. For the next two months, the empty wooden box sat in our apartment\u2019s storage locker.<\/p>\n

First Person: How The Bench brought friendship \u2013 and our neighbourhood \u2013 together<\/a><\/p>\n

Once we got settled in our new home, we had to figure out how to install it. Armed with instructions from the internet, the very basic construction skills of first-time homeowners, a 4×4 cedar post and too much confidence, we got to work. <\/p>\n

The post was meant to be buried two feet in the ground for stability, but we hit concrete faster than expected. Without the tools to cut the post down further, we planted it in the ground as deeply as we could and braced it with large rocks on all sides. This misstep means the top of our library sits comically high at 6\u00bd feet above ground.<\/p>\n

Within a day of the installation, I saw a message pop up in our neighbourhood Facebook group, announcing the arrival of our library. \u201cThank you to you,\u201d the poster wrote. <\/b>I was chuffed. I hadn\u2019t thought of what the library might mean to others until that point, and from there the delight in watching people use it only grew. <\/p>\n

My favourite thing about little libraries is how each has its own character, unique to its owners and place: Boxes painted like Doctor Who\u2019s Tardis time machine are popular (I\u2019ve visited at least three), others have stained glass fronts to match the elegant houses in the background and many more have walls painted by children or artists. <\/p>\n

They come in single and multilevel, or as paired companions to offer collections for different age groups. I like to visit one near my sister\u2019s house with a plaque dedicating it to a loved one who has passed. Beautifully decorated or not, I often stop just to rearrange the books in a messy library under the guise of browsing. <\/p>\n

Each box has its own character on the inside as well. Around the corner, my neighbour\u2019s brightly painted box has become the place for romance paperbacks. Ours, which my daughter hoped would be an endless source of kids books to sate her reading hunger, skews older, and often more literary. <\/p>\n

But the books left in our library also tell us quiet stories of the people who live around us. Someone nearby is trying to understand an autistic child. Someone needs the pep talk of self-help books. Someone tested out vegetarianism early in the year and changed their mind. Someone was grieving, but I like to think that now that they\u2019ve given their books away, it\u2019s because they\u2019re okay. <\/p>\n

First Person: I had to say goodbye to my old Encyclopedia Britannica set<\/a><\/p>\n

Not everything left for us is a winner, and our library garden needs weeding regularly. People leave old flyers and textbooks, stacks of postcards, religious materials, out-of-date technology magazines or really anything else they feel bad throwing out. Most mornings my husband and I will reorganize and tidy the books, and pull out what is better suited for the blue bin. <\/p>\n

I still try to give books not to my taste, such as Empowering Mantras for Awesome Women or Royal Wedding: Andrew and Sarah, a chance. Someone out there purchased this book once, so maybe there is someone else who will connect with it now. However, if it lingers for a few days \u2013 a week tops \u2013 we pull it out. We have a standard to maintain. <\/p>\n

Occasionally I think of taking books we\u2019ve purchased ourselves to the used bookstore to recoup the costs, but then I think of the gift I wouldn\u2019t be giving to my neighbourhood. I have great finds from mine and libraries all over because people chose to pass their purchases along. Better still, watching those people who stop and browse in front of my house makes me endlessly happy; it\u2019s a way that we connect to total strangers in this anonymous city.<\/p>\n

Lizz Bryce lives in Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,27626,19,17,5494,27627],"class_list":{"0":"post-142360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-first-person","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-noastack","15":"tag-nodelphi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115428286160068824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}