One Saturday we spent five hours driving around Sydney with ten boxes of books trying ever so hard to give them away – you see our little home was bursting at the seams and we really did need to be sensible about what we could keep …..
“are they shelf yellowed?” asked one place
“do they have glossy hard covers?” asked another “we can’t recycle them”
“are they sorted into topics?” still another
Sadly no-one would share our previously well-loved books, so all those books came home again. Later that day we read a newspaper story about STREET LIBRARIES.
That was the beginning of our love affair with BIG TOP – THE LITTLE STREET LIBRARY THAT CAN!
We ordered BIG TOP straight away and she was delivered early the following week. We set about giving her a good old lick of paint, topped off with a not-to-be-missed jolly circus style roof.
BIG TOP is now a place where our neighbours share their books, take a book, exchange a book, stand and flick through what’s available, gather to speak to each other, ask us about reading and generally smile as they wander past. One young woman told us that BIG TOP makes her “feel really good to see people in her community wanting to connect with each other”.
The bonus for us is that we can now move more freely in our home since so many of our very much loved books have gone in, and out, of BIG TOP. Clearly there’s a bit of space on our neighbours bookshelves too!
And of course, we have plenty of reasons to make time to get down to our local independent bookshop now ……
