The Smith Family Little Free Library is two-sided; adult titles in the front, books for kids and teens in the back. In Tracy, the library is tucked in between the postal outlet and a senior's activity centre. The Gornish (Rusagonis) set up their little free library in a community park located at a sign-posted crossroads; 0.5km to the Baptist church and 1.6km to the Rec Centre in one direction, 3.3km to the schoolhouse in another, and a third takes you across the Patrick Owens covered bridge (1909).
The twin little free libraries in St. Martins feature miniature murals by a local artist. The overlapping roof boards of the library on Mecklenburg St. wear the same slate grey as the rocks of nearby Tin-Can beach. The library at Bates Landing, standing between river and field, wears a cedar-shingle roof. In Lorneville, the tin-roofed little free library is painted all white and absolutely glows in the morning sun. In Red Head, the library lights up at night (as does the solar-powered Smith library in Waterville).
What all these varied libraries have in common - just like the laundry-room libraries on Roxbury Drive, and the bookshelf in the Outflow men's shelter, the shelves in the Tenant Association buildings in Crescent Valley and on Anglin Drive, and the library snugged in the back of the Irving in Brown's Flat, and still others from St. Stephen to L'Etete, St. Andrews to Long Reach, across Charlotte, Sunbury, Kings, Queens and Saint John counties - is an invitation to borrow, to share, to read. And now, they all have books by New Brunswick authors in common as well.
For almost 20 years, Quality Learning New Brunswick has been promoting literacy by bringing our books, blankets and reading tents to New Brunswick community events. This year, in light of Covid-19 restrictions, we chose to deliver packages of New Brunswick authored books to free community libraries in or near those south-western NB communities our 2020 event tents would have served. While the gift-packs varied, most included seven small picture books for children and families published by the University of New Brunswick Early Childhood Centre, an NB authored board, picture, youth fiction and youth non-fiction book, and a fiction and non-fiction book for adults (e.g., David Adams Richard's Mercy Among the Children or Nicholas Guitard's Waterfalls of New Brunswick: A Guide). We've finished our deliveries - just in time to start celebrating National Library month - and begun writing the final report.
Major funding for this project comes from a New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture Literacy Promotion Grant. Additional support has come from the New Brunswick Department of Social Development, a Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick - Peter Gzowski Invitational (PGI) grant, and various private and corporate donations.
For more information on books, borrowing and libraries in the current context, check out New Brunswick Public Libraries' COVID-19 and Your Library and, from earlier this year, a CBC webstory Is it safe to borrow library books? Your COVID-19 questions answered.
