The Little Red Schoolhouse

Over the last couple of months my husband, a handyman extraordinaire, built a wonderful "Little Red Schoolhouse" lending library and "planted it" in our front lawn.  With ceder shake shingles, real glass windows, and painted a bright, fire engine red, the little library looks on the outside like the one room schoolhouse that my mom and her siblings attended.  On the inside, it holds a treasure.

As we prepped our guestroom for our annual visit from the in-laws, Matt and I realized that there were hundreds of books that we had "stashed" there that needed to be dealt with.  Some of these books were from our own childhoods, my very first copy of Madeline L'engle's, A Wrinkle in Time, or Matt's Hardy Boys collection.  Others were books from my kids' childhoods, like Rebecca's Princess Stories collection, read to her a bazillion times - or Patrick's Harry Potter series, well worn.  I have a hard time getting rid of books, but especially ones with important memories associated with them like these.

There were plenty of books though that any one of us might have read once, and enjoyed, but didn't feel the need to keep.  Matt and I sorted through the boxes, examined and appreciated each book carefully, and created a pile of books to keep and a pile to be placed in our Little Red Schoolhouse Lending Library.

It's tough maintaining this little library and considering who in our neighborhood might be walking by.  We try to keep a selection of books that might appeal to a wide variety of ages - early readers and young adult fiction are in there as well as adult fiction and a cookbook or two. My penchant for romance novels is problematic, though, as our multi-age audience might be shocked by the covers (or contents!)  Those I'm donating to the real library!

Almost daily either Matt or myself stops and checks the collection to see if anything has been picked up.  If there is an empty space, we celebrate that someone else will enjoy that book - and then we head to our collection to re-fill this special space.