Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
HURLEY K-12 SCHOOL'S "Free Little Library" is shown outside the school's front entrance Friday. The school recently joined the effort to improve literacy in communities throughout the world.
HURLEY - Hurley K-12 School now has two fully stocked libraries - even if one of them is only a small wooden box outside the front entrance.
The box is known as a "Free Little Library," a movement crossing the globe to increase reading and literacy.
"We just filled it (with books) this week," said Shannon Dahlbacka, high school English teacher and services learning coordinator, who helped with the project.
Dahlbacka said the project started over the summer, but once school was back in session, it was easier to fill the house of books with donated literature.
"Now people can come grab a book, and hopefully return it, or drop one off, and it's really about promoting literacy in the community," she said, adding that it provides free books for those who can't always afford their own.
Dahlbacka said books are borrowed from the little library on the "truth and honor system," though Hurley's National Honor Society students will be keeping an eye on library from time to time.
Dahlbacka said a school secretary brought the idea to her. From there, Hurley's Technology Education instructor Roger Peterson found a student, Joey Kasper, who graduated from Hurley this past year, to build and paint the library.
"It is in front of the Hurley School and anyone is invited to 'Take a Book, Return a Book' as is the motto from the organization," Dahlbacka said. "We are registered and ready to read."
The school has just recently registered the little library online through the organization's website, which has a Google map displaying all the locations of other such libraries.
According to the website, in 2009, Todd Bol, of Hudson, Wis., built a model of a one-room schoolhouse in honor of his mother, who was a school teacher and loved to read. The model schoolhouse was filled with books and became the first "Free Little Library."
Rick Brooks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, saw the idea and the two collaborated on the making it a worldwide effort.
For more information, visit freelittlelibrary.org.
