DETROIT – Over the years, Detroit has held many titles and nicknames, many of them negative – which is why, as the city works to reinvent itself, one local woman is on a mission to crown it the “Little Free Library capital of the world.”
Kim Kozlowski wants to raise enough money over the next 12 months to build and install 313 Little Free Libraries in Detroit, in honor of the city’s iconic area code. She said the libraries are neighborhood boxes used to promote two things she feels Detroit needs: literacy and community.
“They are placed where you can put some of your favorite books, and they’re for anyone to take – they’re for free,” she said. “You can take a book, you can leave a book, and just because you take one doesn’t mean you have to leave one.”
The boxes that house the libraries are being made from reclaimed wood from abandoned Detroit homes.
Kozlowski said the inspiration for the project came from the success of a Little Free Library she and her husband put up in front of their own home. Within days, she said, books were being circulated throughout the neighborhood.
“Best of all, people came out of their homes and started talking to us, and one another,” she said, “and it was just this real sense of community building in our neighborhood that really excited me.”
There are currently more than 20,000 Little Free Libraries around the world, according to the founder of the movement, Todd Bol, a Wisconsin man who has pledged to donate 15 Little Free Libraries to Detroit this fall.
This article was republished from Public News Service. For more information, click on PublicNewsService.Org
