‘A sound mind in a sound body’
As someone whose name is part of the Bookmark the Park initiative, I was surprised and very pleased to read The Shepherdstown Chronicle’s Boots on the Ground story of the new Little Free Libraries in our bookish town. Wonderful!
These are the first in our town parks but not, sans “official” registering, the first such Little Free Libraries in and around Shepherdstown. Four or five years ago now, the Shepherdstown Community Club had the first five built and set up by an Eagle Scout troop. They were placed on Princess Street at the Little Schoolhouse, in front of the Wellness Center, in front of McMurran Hall, in Morgan’s Grove Park and in Sam Michaels Park.
I have one particularly delightful memory related to the Little Free Library by the Little Schoolhouse. One fine morning, I filled it up with a full shelf of children’s picture books. Between one trip from my car and the next, I saw two young ones clutching two of these books each, and heard their mom say, “We’ll read these tonight, bring them back tomorrow and get two more.” It made my day!
One also has to mention the whole bookcase, usually year round, in front of the Shepherdstown Community Club, where I have often found my next unplanned read. A whole bookshelf version of a Little Free Library!
Keeping the book selection and set-up fresh and alive is the challenge. The Shepherdstown Community Club gets donations, as does Shepherdstown Shares, and refreshing them happens. Slowly. But, as Andrew Carnegie decreed when he donated his library to a community, “You must maintain and run it, community.”
Please consider taking the books you no longer want to these libraries. Other options: both Shepherdstown Public Library and Scarborough Library have unwanted books free or as good as free at their entrances. Consider buying some from the book sales that happen in this (and other) towns. The Charles Town Library has a table full, with boxes under it, for sale all the time. Four Seasons Books has marked-down and used books for sale cheaper than your last little splurge. Spring all the lonely and unhappy books and take them to circulate for free. Fresh air cures books’ unhappiness too. They will make many appreciative, and even may change a life or two.
Shepherdstown Shares still remembers the Latin phrase, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” meaning, “A sound mind in a sound body.” That phrase proves true, regarding the benefit of reading to a person’s overall health. And Little Free Libraries make that benefit achievable!
Mark Kohut, of Shepherdstown