When Amanda Funk spotted the array of children’s books celebrating Native America heritage, she scooped them up and hugged them in her arms.
“I didn’t have anything like this when I was young,” said Funk, co-founder and executive director of the Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge.
The books supplied by the United Way of Berks County’s Ready.Set.Read! initiative were there for the taking Thursday during the official opening of the center’s Little Free Library outside the Berks County Community Foundation, 237 Court St.
The center was awarded a Little Free Library impact grant for an Indigenous little library last year.
A citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, Funk grew up in Berks County with little connection outside her family to the tribe once dominant in the region of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and southern Michigan.
“If you have to go a far distance to be able to connect with that part of yourself and you don’t get to exist with that identity outside home, that really does something to divide you internally,” she said.
Reading books about the Potawatomi and other tribes, such as “Many Nations: An Alphabet of Native America” by Joseph Bruchac, is a way for children with and without indigenous heritage to learn about Native peoples.
“People want more opportunities to connect to their cultures because it’s such a rare gem,” Funk said. “It really is. And so when I saw these books, I was, like, over the moon excited.”
Little Free Library grants support no-cost book-sharing boxes where needed most on tribal lands and in indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada, she explained.
“They work with indigenous community leaders and members to place book exchanges in locations where book access is important to improving literacy,” Funk said.
There are over 13,000 indigenous people in Berks County according to data from the Urban Indian Health Institute, she said, and the location of this library is within a designated high-poverty area and a book desert, where households are least likely to have 100 or more books in the home.
“We live in an intertribal area where everyone is represented by different tribal groups,” Funk said. “We’re on Lenape land here. Sure there’s plenty of Lenape people here. There’s also plenty of people from other tribes, lots of indigenous people from the Caribbean. Taino people especially, these numbers are rising especially in the city of Reading.”
The Little Free Library’s Indigenous grant program aims to strengthen the community, inspire readers, expand easy book access, support positive literacy outcomes and make books available in high-need locations, like Reading, serving Indigenous peoples, Funk said.
Books for people of all ages and of all genres can be exchanged at the library, but children’s books and books on indigenous peoples are featured, said Alexi Weiskircher, co-founder of the center, visual director and research coordinator.
“To be diverse, we’re going to make sure that we have Native people regularly represented,” she said. “But there are lots of other people and lots of other books that appeal to people of all ages, who are going to stop and look for books here.”
Weiskircher and Funk said they are grateful for the community effort that made the little library a reality.
“We’re also grateful for the generosity of our host site, Berks County Community Foundation, for believing in this Little Free Library project and encouraging community literacy by allowing us to install the library in front of their building,” Funk said.
Wyomissing Boy Scout Troop 413 assembled the small box with a glass-paned door and secured it to a post anchored into a sturdy planter, donated by New Castle Lawn and Landscape, Birdsboro.
New Castle also provided soil, wood chips and winter greens.
The concrete and other supplies used to secure the post were donated by Weaver’s Ace Hardware, Sinking Spring.
Since its installation, Funk said, the library has seen a lot of traffic, and books are frequently donated and exchanged by the library stewards and neighbors.
Supplying children’s books and other books faithfully representing Native people and those of other diverse cultures is an opportunity for the Widoktadwen Center to really make impact in the community, Funk said.
“Especially since that’s exactly what I was missing when I was young,” she said. “I want a different future for youth where they see themselves represented in books. Everybody sees themselves represented.”
