Little Free Libraries are a global phenomenon. To date‚ the small front-year book exchanges number over 50,000 globally in 70 countries — from Iceland to Tasmania to Pakistan. Now, the West Windsor Arts Center, at 952 Alexander Road, has joined this world-wide movement with its own new Little Free Library to share books, bring people together and create communities of readers.
“Last summer, while vacationing in the Pacific Northwest, I finished reading the book I had brought and exchanged it for another at the Little Free Library on San Juan Island,” Ilene Dube, WWAC member, said. “I had seen these around, at the Hopewell Train Station and at the community garden in West Windsor, and I started thinking about having one at the West Windsor Arts Center.”
To create the red box with a clear glass hatch door and two shelves of books, Dube immediately thought of local West Windsor woodworker Ted Ross, who was birding in Borneo at the time. Ross, a long-time WWAC supporter, was himself a fan of the Little Free Libraries that dot his daughter’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
“Building the library was a nice diversion from the more typical large projects such as tables and dressers that I had been working on,” he said.
“We are thrilled to have this expression of creative place-making as part of the West Windsor Arts Center,” executive director Aylin Green said. “It is real evidence for the care and love of place that Ted Ross and Ilene Dube have shared with the community.”
The Little Free Library has quickly filled with books and has become a welcome addition at the Arts Center, where visitors enjoy the give and take of books. As the small plaque just below the door reads, “Take a Book – Leave a Book.”
