Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic
When Maggie Johnson and her husband were traveling in Albania over the summer, they were a bit surprised to stumble across a Little Free Library, a free neighborhood-based book exchange.
Johnson, who teaches art at Chehalem Valley Middle School, was familiar with the concept, as Newberg has several of its own.
“It was very curious to find one there,” Johnson said. “Then further on down the road, we were in Slovenia and we saw two of them in a castle, so why can’t we have one at school?”
Johnson installed one at Chehalem Valley at the start of the year and since then, it has caught on like wildfire with teachers, parents and especially, as Johnson had hoped, students.
“Every time I walk past it, there’s at least two or three people,” seventh-grade student C.J. Diarmit said. “They’re always working on something.”
The school is calling their lending outpost, which is located in a comfy nook between the library and the staircase on the first floor, a tiny free library because it hasn’t been officially registered with the Little Free Library program.
Teachers have donated a couch, a few chairs and a desk, and Johnson said teaching aides have even been using it to hold one-on-one sessions with students.
“There was a school counselor from one of the other schools in there the other day,” Johnson said. “I told him, ‘I see you’ve found our tiny library.’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s the quietest place in the whole district.’”
Students like Diarmit and eighth-grader Alexis Crow are enjoying the process of stocking the library with new books, then seeing when they are taken by other students and by whom.
Johnson encouraged them to follow the comings and goings of the books they donate as a sort of game and because the official Little Free Library program boasts over 32,000 exchanges worldwide, likes the opportunity it gives them to think big.
“For a kid who’s 11 or 12 to think that my school has a little thing like they have in the rest of the world is kind of cool,” Johnson said. “It gets their brain out of Newberg for a little bit.”
Johnson has also made the library a service project for her art classes, which are decorating and installing book plates under the cover of each book that explain the concept of the tiny free library.
The parent group at Chehalem Valley helped give the tiny free library a timely boost by purchasing $200 worth of new books at the school’s Scholastic Book earlier this fall. The collection has grown to approximately 350 in just a few months.
Principal Karen Pugsley has been excited to see how the whole school has rallied to contribute to the library’s success and is thrilled at how it’s helping to create a print-rich environment that further supports and encourages students in their reading.
“It’s also humanizing this space so we have a space that people actually want to be in,” Pugsley said. “One of our reading goals for sixth grade is to have a culture of literacy. Having the tiny library in school is one of our ways of making that happen.”
For more information, email Johnson at johnsonm@newberg.k12.or.us. To donate books, mark that they are for the tiny free library and drop them off at the school office.
