DECATUR – A reward waited right outside for Mya Barbee, 5, who hung out in the Decatur Family YMCA's child care center this summer while her dad exercised elsewhere in the building.
On the way to the car, father and daughter would stop at the Little Free Library, painted with characters from Dr. Seuss children's books, where the girl would leave a book she was finished with and find a different one to take home.
Not long ago she chose “My Daddy (Caillou)” written by Christine L'Heureux and illustrated by Helene Desputeaux. “I like it because it has fathers in it,” Mya said.
“I think it's cool,” said her dad, Lornell Barbee. “She likes to read, so why not switch her books with theirs?”
More and more readers are asking that question as more and more Little Free Libraries continue to pop up in the Decatur area.
People are also reading…
The pair at the YMCA, one out front with Dr. Seuss characters and one beside the Camp Sokkia Pavilion north of the building and painted with Minions, are but the latest examples of a trend begun locally by Judy Selle, who planted the first small, outdoor library on a stick outside her South Shores home at 75 Phillips Drive in October 2013.
When Keith Worlan, youth and family director at the YMCA, proposed installing one in time for the start of Camp Sokkia in June, operations director Don Stolz suggested a second one for the rest of the Y's customers.
Becky Smith, a former lifeguard and a member of the Camp Sokkia staff, painted them both.
“We thought it was a good fit because we have such a push for literacy in our summer camp and after-school program,” Worlan said. “It's taking off a lot faster than I expected it to.”
Todd Bol started the Little Free Library movement in 2009 when he built one that looked like a one-room school house in Hudson, Wis., as a tribute to his mother.
The goal quickly became to build as many little libraries as Andrew Carnegie constructed full-size ones – 2,510 – a target surpassed in August of 2012. Indeed, there are more than 10 times that number of registered Little Free Libraries in the world today, most of them in the United States.
The concept is for people leave a book and take a book with no deadlines or fines to interfere with the pleasure of reading.
Pam Smith of 2530 S. Forest Crest Road was apparently the second Decatur resident to put up a library, after receiving a barn-style model for Christmas in 2013.
She and Selle say their libraries receive daily visits, that children's books are the most popular and that they are happy the number little libraries is multiplying in Macon County.
“I had one lady from Florida come to see mine while she was in the area visiting family,” Smith said.
The Barclay Public Library District just replaced the boxes on the four Little Free Libraries it has maintained for a little over a year.
Two are at Casey's General Stores, one at West Mound Road and North Taylorville Avenue in Decatur and the other at 150 S. Illinois 121 in Warrensburg, a third at Harristown Elementary School and a fourth at the firehouse in Latham.
Library director Lacey Wright said the original boxes did not stand up to the weather, but the new ones, built by Paul Wells of Decatur and painted by teen volunteers including Whitney Meltz, Lacey Edwards, Skye Williams and Mikayla Craw, should keep the books inside contained and dry.
So far the little libraries in Decatur and Harristown are used the most, Wright said.
A Little Free Library installed at the Dennis School garden in the spring of 2014 was moved this spring to the home of its builder John Larcher, who lives at 1679 W. Main St. “It's getting a little bit more traffic all the time,” Larcher said.
Matt Andrews, principal of Dennis School, said the library got a lot of use by the students, but the box kept getting separated from the post either by the wind or by vandals when it was at the school's garden.
Laurel Lorey, meanwhile, has had a Little Free Library at her home at 1651 N. Gregory Ave. since her daughter and son-in-law gave her one for Mother's Day.
Her son-in-law, George Mackey of St. Paul, Minn., fashioned it out of parts from an old dresser.
“They have one and told me how much fun they were having with it,” Lorey said. “I'm an old retired teacher and like to promote reading.”
Lorey's desire is a trait Little Free Librarians seem to share, one that often leads them to add their own books to their libraries whenever the inventory runs low.
“I probably spend $50 a month at the monthly Friends of the Decatur Public Library used book sale,” Selle said. “It's for a good cause is how I look at it.”
Franklin School fourth-grader Briyanna McDermith, 9, said she spent a lot of time browsing the Little Free Library at Camp Sokkia this summer.
“You can walk right up and get what you want to read,” she said. “Books tell stories about things I may not know about.”