Dying grand old tree is reborn as magical Little Free Library
For more than a decade, Sharalee Armitage Howard watched in dismay as the grand cottonwood tree in front of her Idaho home plopped dead branches on her flower gardens and sidewalk.
Then came the last straw: a large branch from the dying, 110-year-old tree tumbled onto her son’s car, causing several hundred dollars in damage.
It was time to cut it down before it toppled in a storm.
But Howard, a book lover who works at her local library in Coeur d’Alene, felt an attachment to the tree. She wanted to give it a new life. She had no idea her creation would not only become the talk of her neighborhood, it would fly across the internet on social media, reaching people around the world.
Howard designed a Pinterest-worthy Little Free Library that looks like the home of a family of magical elves. The converted stump-turned-book-offering is complete with stone steps leading to a tiny glass French door, a hanging lantern, shelves and a peaked roof. The top of the door is dotted with tiny wooden replicas of books such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Nancy Drew” and “Little Women.”
When Howard posted a photo of her creation on Facebook in December, it raced around social media as people shared it more than 100,000 times and left more than 13,000 comments.
“Don’t be surprised when some elves move in!” wrote a man in Arkansas.
“It’s a portal to another world on so many levels! Cheers to you and thank you for making the world a little more delightful!” commented a woman in New York.
Howard figured her “little tree library” — as some now call it — would be eye-catching, but she didn’t expect such a huge response.
“I’m shocked at how many people I’ve heard from these past several months,” said Howard, a 42-year-old mother of four.
She has hundreds of regular book visitors and a continual turnover of titles. So much so that her family hasn’t had to stock the shelves with volumes of their own since it opened in December with several dozen books.
Howard recalled the sad day in October when she and her husband, Jamie Howard, paid a tree removal company to slowly take down their dying cottonwood one section at a time over two days.
Envisioning what the stump would become helped make it easier to see the tree hauled away, said Howard. She decided on a Little Free Library, she said, after she made one for a school fundraising auction two years ago.
Howard’s Little Free Library joined a network of more than 80,000 of them across the United States and 91 countries.
The first Little Free Library was built by the late Todd Bol in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009, according to Margaret Aldrich, a spokeswoman for the Little Free Library nonprofit organization. The tiny libraries all operate with a common principle: “Take a book, return a book.”
Aldrich said she’s seen libraries resembling rocket ships, Victorian mansions and Volkswagen minibuses, but Howard’s tree library has raised the “wow” factor.
Howard said the final touch will be picking a name and attaching a sign to her mini book haven. She has a leading candidate.
“I’m thinking of calling it ‘A Street Branch,’ ” she said, a nod to her library’s roots. “I like to think that most people will get it.”