I had never seen a Little Free Library (LFL) before moving from a Detroit suburb to Rockridge 15 years ago. What a pleasure to find a book to read or share a book already read as part of my neighborhood walk.
But now, I only have to stroll a few houses down my block. That’s because new neighbors Zoe Shuchter and Alec Jenkins recently unveiled their street-side library. They built it themselves, starting with a used glass-faced wood curio display case discovered at Urban Ore in Berkeley.
Next stop was Home Depot to purchase roofing materials, shelving, and a sturdy post. Although Jenkins, a physicist, isn’t likely to find the scientific books he reads in the library he built, “he likes a project,” Shuchter, a nurse at UCSF Medical Center, said. After painting it, they topped it off with a Little Free Library sign purchased from Etsy.
She had frequented “the very gigantic Little Free Library” near their former rental, “but I always wanted one of my own. I’m a little too disorganized to get a library card because I read in streaks. I get a pile of books and go through them, so the LFL model works really well.”
In the few weeks that it has been up and running, “It waxes and wanes between 20 and three books,” Shuchter said one early evening. “There is so much turnover. I think it has already changed from this morning.” Her next step is to officially register it with the Little Free Library nonprofit organization which also sells various architectural styles of LFLs either already constructed or as do-it-yourself kits.
Inveterate walker Dona Turner loves the variety of street-side libraries throughout Rockridge. Photos by Dona Turner.
“It’s so great that it’s so well used,” said block captain Dona Turner. “The books are flying out of there. It’s a charming addition.” As an avid walker and longtime user of Rockridge’s book-sharing boxes, Turner said: “You’re walking down the street, you see a little library, and you think, ‘What’s there that I might really enjoy.’ It really perks me up.”
A mile or so away, Josh and Kathleen Aycock’s Little Free Library, which they ordered, sank the post, assembled, installed, and painted, includes a shelf for dog treats and a bench. Its book section is divided between children’s and adult books. “We’re real dog people, and we love the community that’s grown up around the dog treats box,” Josh said. “We wanted our spot—the bench, the kids’ books, the treats—to feel welcoming,”
“Reading is important to us,” Josh said, who, with two young children, May, 6, and Penny, 3, also makes frequent visits to the Temescal and Rockridge libraries. “We are constantly churning through books; our little library is a way to share them and meet other families in the neighborhood.”
Ben Bonnes’ little library (left) was an auction prize while three book boxes found on a Rockridge corner are labeled for toy sharing, adult tomes, and children's books, respectively. Photos/JBerne
In another part of Rockridge, the Ben Bonnes family won their street-side library at a Chabot Elementary auction when daughter Nina, now in high school, was a student there. They painted it to match their house. “We have a blast finding old magazines going back to the Fifties,” Bonnes said. Once, an elderly neighbor left a timeworn book with a receipt from an army post in Japan.
But reconstruction may be in this little library’s future. “My daughter is interested in becoming an architect,” Bonnes said. “She’s thinking of coming up with a new design.”
A close look at the photo at the bottom right reveals a roof-top garden that Bennett Diamond included when he designed and built this Little Free Library as a birthday gift for his dad, Wayne Diamond. “My dad loves libraries and instilled a love for them and reading in my sister and I from a young age,” Bennett wrote in an email from Seattle where he is an engineer.
Home from college during the Covid lockdown, Bennett went on “countless family neighborhood walks” and saw many well-designed street-side libraries, he said. “I also started getting into gardening, and realized that I could make a small garden and library for my dad for his birthday.”
The library also features a garden share basket and dog treat container, Wayne said. “The books are hopefully rotated and recirculated (when it is obvious that interest is lacking). We try to keep the dog treat jar/container filled, and the basket offers occasional treats (Diane Diamond’s homegrown lemons or persimmons) for adults.”
As recounted on the Little Free Library website, the LFL movement began in 2009 in Hudson, Wisconsin, when founder Todd Bol built a small wooden box shaped like a one-room schoolhouse and placed it in his front yard as a tribute to his late mother, a former teacher who loved to read.
Bol was inspired by community gift-sharing networks and the historic public library building program of industrialist Andrew Carnegie. He set an initial goal of building 2,510 Little Free Libraries hoping to surpass, at least in number, what Carnegie had done. He achieved that well before his death in 2018. By 2025, there were more than 200,000 Little Free Library book-sharing boxes in 128 countries across all seven continents, according to the LFL website.
It’s unknown whether these little libraries are bedecked for Halloween or host skeletons year-round. Photos/JBerne
Yes, even Antarctica boasts one, although it is located inside the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, given the exterior winter temperatures of minus 125°F. Although California has the highest number of registered boxes (we are such a big state), Idaho, Washington, and Nebraska have more boxes per capita.
When daughter Lila, now a college freshman, was in grade school, she asked for a Little Free Library for her birthday, Samantha Moss Burggrabe told me, as we sat on her front steps, across the sidewalk from the sharing library painted to match her Rockridge house.
“People actually use it. It’s never empty. It totally runs itself. I see a lot of children’s books—they get taken immediately.” Her only complaint is when people put in non-book items like cassette tapes or small toys. “I put our books in it all the time. Over the years, I’ve recycled tons of books.”
These book-bearing boxes dot more than Oakland’s more affluent areas. In 2022, Steph and Ayesha Curry’s foundation, Eat, Learn, Play, partnered with the LFL organization to establish and stock 150 "Little Town Libraries” in under-resourced neighborhoods, including West Oakland, Fruitvale, and Chinatown.
If you have a Rockridge story to tell, please email judyberne@att.net. More information on Little Free Libraries is available on their website.
