Little Free Libraries Build Community Through Reading

From her job at Park Books to her home on Giddings Avenue, Colby Peters has always filled her life with reading. Peters set up a “Little Free Library” at her house in 2019, one of many throughout Severna Park and nearby towns. The raised enclosure is often packed with books, as community members stop by to take titles that interest them and leave behind stories for others to enjoy.

“I love brief encounters or chance encounters with other people, so I loved the idea of having something where people would stop and we would have the opportunity to have a conversation,” Peters said. “And I also thought it’s just a really nice way to be of service to the community.”

Among the hundreds of thousands of these public book exchanges across the globe, a couple of Little Free Libraries in Arnold serve the community in an additional way. Jackie Hetrick stewards two libraries that were designed by former Severn River Lions Club Past International President Clement Kusiak and built with the help of the Lions Club. The libraries honor Oliver Wittig, former principal of Severna Park High School, and Hetrick’s son Sean, a musician who died in 2020.

“It’s nice that they’re dedicated and have an extra purpose,” Hetrick said.

Little Free Libraries like the ones maintained by Peters and Hetrick can be found throughout the community. The Little Free Library nonprofit organization makes it easy to set up libraries. Many residents with their own libraries purchased them from the Little Free Library website and built them using kits sent by the nonprofit. Other Little Free Libraries, such as Jim Baer’s on Inverness Road, were built almost entirely by their stewards.

Baer first became interested in Little Free Libraries after seeing one while walking through his sister-in-law’s neighborhood in Georgia. He built his first one about 12 years ago in his shop, modeling its black and white exterior after his house. Three years ago, he built another one to hold children’s books. He plans to rebuild the children’s book library later this year, so it will hold up better against the weather and accommodate larger books.

Two other Little Free Libraries have popped up within about a mile of his house, their stewards taking inspiration from Baer’s. “It’s a landmark by which people navigate in the neighborhood,” Baer said.

Books aren’t the only things that make their way into the Little Free Libraries. Baer and his wife often find kindness rocks in the garden beneath their libraries, painted by another community member. Someone else leaves bookmarks with Bible verses.

Susan Mahaffee, who maintains the Little Free Library on Heavitree Lane in Chartwell, is hoping to install a dog treat container when she replaces the library with a larger one this fall. She put the current one up during the pandemic after observing how many kids get most of their books from school libraries.

“I realized, well, the kids aren’t in school,” Mahaffee said. “So if the kids aren’t in school, how are they going to get books?”

Mahaffee’s library is a popular place in the neighborhood. Kids have used it as a location for lemonade stands. And as Mahaffee hoped, her Little Free Library was an important spot for community members during the pandemic. One woman brought her grandson to Mahaffee’s library every week, giving him time to sit on the bench to read a book before putting it back in the library for someone else to enjoy.

Emily Clement’s library on Cypress Road also had a community impact during the pandemic. “During COVID, I was making cloth masks when that was all you could get, and I put some of those in there,” she said.

Clement’s library started after a large oak tree in her yard died in 2018. She had seen Little Free Libraries around before and was intrigued by the concept, and her husband, Allen, suggested turning the tree into a library. They cut it down to a stump and gave it a door and a roof, and bookshelves sit directly inside the tree.

“It is a tree stump, so it is deteriorating, and we can see that it’s probably not going to last forever,” Clement said. “And I don’t know what we’ll do next, but whatever we do next, I’d like it to somehow resemble a tree. So the future is some other way of making it the ‘Little Tree Library’ when our stump falls apart.”

Community members including retired schoolteacher Mania Missirian appreciate how Little Free Libraries bring reading to the community. Missirian has donated and borrowed books from the library behind The Big Bean in Severna Park for about four years.

“(The library is) building a sense of community by giving and receiving something so valuable — books!” Missirian said.

To find a map of nearby Little Free Libraries, go to www.littlefreelibrary.org.