LFL #9555 has seen better days 📚

LFL#9555 has seen better days 📚

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Photo taken at: Montrose Community Park

Little Free Library visits in the morning

While I was in the neighborhood this morning, I couldn’t resist stopping by the Montrose Community Park to check in on the Little Free Library there. (I also had a handful of kids chapter books that I thought might go to good use there.)

Vandalism and neglect

I was a bit disappointed at the level of neglect that Little Free Library #9555 has been experiencing. The Plexiglas front has been broken and removed, and the door’s wooden frame has been smashed in the process. The wooden LFL placard has been torn out and left, with rusting nails, on top of the library. The Plexiglas on the left side has been smashed and partially removed leaving some dangerous jagged edges.

Can you help?

Despite the poor shape of the library, at least it’s still there and functioning! If you have any books to donate to it and don’t want to make the trek, leave them with us and a post-it note, and I’m happy to drop them off in the coming weeks. I felt bad that donating 5 books almost doubled the contents of the library.

I hope someone from the Glendale Department of Library, Arts, and Culture takes notice and stops by to fix things up a bit. Perhaps sending someone up once a month to put in fliers on the Plexiglas sides for events like the upcoming One Book/One Glendale for Younger Readers 2016 event featuring author Katherine Applegate and the book The One And Only Ivan would help keep libraries like this in better shape? Surely there’s a few dollars in the renovation project for the Central Library to help out.

Other Little Free Libraries in the Glendale, Pasadena, and South Pasadena Areas

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve visited a few of the other nearby Glendale, Pasadena, and South Pasadena Libraries. You can find most of them on the official map at Little Free Library’s newly updated website.

There are also a handful of libraries not on the map that are stewarded by the City of Glendale and the Department of Libraries, Art, and Culture. The one with the best selection by far was the one at the Montrose Community Park, followed by Verdugo Park, and then City Hall.  Sadly, when I visited this morning, the LFL at Cerritos Park was completely bare! We’ll have to take some books over to share the next time we go.

Cerritos Park Little Free Library

The empty and lonely Cerritos Park Little Free Library

South Pasadena has a lovely grouping of three libraries with great selection in the middle of town within just a few blocks of each other (on Oak by the Middle School and near Holy Family church), making them an ideal neighborhood for an evening’s postprandial stroll.

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For those who are Dr. Who fans, there’s a Little Free Library Tardis over in San Gabriel.

Little Free Library Tardis in San Gabriel

Little Free Library Tardis in San Gabriel

Pasadena Arroyo CoOp

An outdoor library (apparently not an official LFL, or maybe it’s charter sign was stolen) at the Arroyo Co op with some convenient outdoor seating.

South Pasadena LFL on Garfield

On the North side of Garfield in South Pasadena, this Little Free Library has some excellent selection and is in a strollable neighborhood.