Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) thinks the little free libraries along many Chicago sidewalks are bad — very bad. They are “unregulated”! And they’re “popular”! And many of them are planted in city soil! (Collective gasp.)
That’s what he told Quinn Myers of Block Club Chicago recently, making these tiny book repositories sound like the height of criminality. And he wants to crack down on them hard.
I’m against that. And so is my one-year-old grandson Ulysses.
You’ve seen one of these free libraries if you’ve done much walking along Chicago streets. It’s a simple box atop a pedestal, usually of wood. There’s often a glass door that permits you to look inside. If you see something you like, you can take it out. If you have something you want to give away, you can leave it.
Yeah, the height of criminality.
Beware the slippery slope!
That’s how Lopez sees it. After all, those located on the city’s parkway don’t have city permission — and haven’t paid a fee — to be there, and, Lord knows, what might happen next. Gardens in the parkway? A quiet bench? It’s a slippery slope.
And, maybe worst of all, these small literary outposts are being erected by private citizens! Taking the law, or at least the land, into their own hands!
Think of it: Jane Chicagoan decides that she likes books but has too many of them. She also likes the environment and knows that the American society is producing a lot more garbage than it can deal with.
So, she decides to put up a little library box on the parkway where passersby can easily take books out and put books in. It’s a way to share the bookish wealth and to protect the environment by keeping these volumes in circulation.
Can’t see the value of little free libraries?
But Lopez apparently can’t see the value of being able to walk up to a little free library and walk away with a copy of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park or of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling or Lords of the Levee: The Story of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink by Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan. Or the value of having Jane Chicagoan taking pride in making the city parkway something more than a strip of grass with maybe a tree.
No, the ordinance he proposed this summer won’t even let Jane Chicagoan put up a little free library.
Indeed, these book cupboards are such a dangerous threat to civic life in Chicago that, according to Lopez, they should only be erected by “organizations, not-for-profit entities and licensed businesses” — with, of course, a public way use permit.
On October 3, the Lopez ordinance was approved without discussion by the City Council’s Committee on Transportation and Public Way and went before the full council the next day. There, however, the vote was delayed on a motion by Ald. Daniel LaSpata (31st) and Maria Hadden (49th).
Even if the book is upside down
Maybe that’s a good sign. I hope so. I’m a fan of the little free libraries, and so is Ulysses even though, at 16-months, he can’t read yet.
When I take him for a walk, I often stop at one of those book boxes, and he quickly has his arm out as a signal he wants a book from inside. Ulysses likes turning the pages and looking at the pictures, even if the book is upside down.
I think of the little free libraries as small early schools for him to learn the joy and wonder of reading. Jane Chicagoan knows all about the joy and wonder of reading, so do all the other people who put up these book boxes and who use these book boxes.
Does Alderman Lopez know that joy and wonder? I wonder.
Patrick T. Reardon
10.17.23
This essay originally ran at Third Coast Review on 10.12.23.
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.