Grab a book or leave a book at the Little Free Library in Leesburg

Julie Garisto, Leesburg Daily Commercial
·2 min read
Judy Lewi, Charyl Winner, Stephanie Haw, Gary Hicks, Elaine Brown, Eileen Alvarez and Candy Davis celebrate the new Little Free Library in Leesburg.
Judy Lewi, Charyl Winner, Stephanie Haw, Gary Hicks, Elaine Brown, Eileen Alvarez and Candy Davis celebrate the new Little Free Library in Leesburg.

Are you trying to encourage your tween to put down the phone or video game and read? Do you want to share the love of the written word with loved ones, or just find a good read yourself?

Members of the Mary Ellen Robertson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Morrison United Methodist Church dedicated a Little Free Library on last week on the church’s campus at 1005 W. Main St., Leesburg. It will contain books for all reading levels with an emphasis on new readers from childhood through adolescence.

A project coordinated by the MER chapter literacy committee, the Little Free Library is a free book-sharing box where anyone may take a book or share a book.

"In the United States, 14 percent of the adult population — a staggering 32 million adults — cannot read," — said Marcie Craig Post, executive director of International Literacy Association, in a panel discussion at the Institute of International Education in April 2015.

“We know that literacy helps people escape the bonds of poverty and live longer," she added. "We know that people who are literate are more inclined to vote, take part in their community and seek medical help for themselves and their families. They’re also better equipped to take advantage of knowledge jobs, which are growing at explosive rates.”

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Highland Lakes craftsmen Clayton Stanley and Mike Wells helped build the Little Free Library, and Mike Burkett and Frank Provenzano from Morrison United Methodist Church helped installed it.

Inspired by the nonprofit Little Free Library, the book boxes go back to 2009, when Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin built a model of a one-room schoolhouse — a tribute to his bookworm mother. His neighbors and friends loved it, so he built several more and gave them away.

This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Self-checkout lines: Read a book from Little Free Library in Leesburg