Free The Little Free Library!
A 9-year-old boy in Kansas was forced to take down the Little Free Library he'd constructed in his yard after the local city council decided it was an illegal structure.
After returning from vacation, the Collins family found a letter from the city that said all structures not attached to a house are illegal in Leawood, KS, and that library had to be removed.
Whether or not fun, dancing, and the smile of a child are legal in Leawood is uncertain.
Little Free Libraries are small, mailbox-like bookshelves, usually placed outside with a "Take a Book, Leave a Book" borrowing policy.
Just in case you don't think the City Council is monstrous, here's what Spencer, the Little Free Library's Curator, had to say about reading:
It's kind of like I'm in a whole other world and I like that.
Concerned citizens of the world can certainly contact the Leawood City Council. Their emails are available here (jsut scroll down a bit).
image By: Sun, Yazhou
News by Peter Derk
Peter Derk lives, writes, and works in Colorado. Buy him a drink and he'll talk books all day. Buy him two and he'll be happy to tell you about the horrors of being responsible for a public restroom.
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Comments
This is right down the highway from me. It's a travesty that they made the kid take it down. I suspect a complaint from a curmudgeon of a neighbor.
Can they nail a few two by fours strung out from the side of the garage to the Library? Then it's "technically" attached to the house! And wait, does no one in this town have swingsets or sandboxes????
Or tents for that matter.
It does sound like a neighbor complaint. This makes me sad because it is a wondeful idea. And it is nicely constructed too. You can tell that they put a lot of effort into making it.
I'm gonna put Leawood, Kansas on my list of places I don't want to live. This is ridiculous! To be literal about it, I don't think this little library, as well constructed as it appears--great job Collins family, your little library looks great!--I don't think it's actually a structure.
I don't know where this fear of books and literacy comes from, but its a canary in a coal mine, if you know what I mean.
I used to stop there and spend money once in a great while. Not anymore.
I'm one zip code over from Leawood. It's a different breed of people there. They take their HOA regulations way too fucking seriously. There's no crime there, so the residents have to find stuff to complain about...stuff like this. Another thing about Leawood: don't drive through there if you're black...you will get pulled over. It's a neighborhood of rich, snotty, bigoted pricks.