The Bold Bookmark

How Donated Books from Snoqualmie Elementary Found New Homes Across Snoqualmie Valley

Stepping into Snoqualmie Elementary School’s tradition, all of the books from our Book Drive were offered to students and families through giveaways.

At both the STEAM Night and end-of-year Field Day, students were encouraged to take home as many of the donated books as they wanted. Over the two events, approximately 1,350 books found new homes!

At the end of Field Day, we still had approximately 575 books left. In prior years, these were given to the Friends of the Snoqualmie Library. To lighten the already immense load of the SES PTSA Board, I offered to handle the donations and confirmed they were comfortable with me distributing the books throughout the area.

This set the stage for what turned into a great book-giveaway adventure!

My kids and I took two big boxes of books to the Friends of the Snoqualmie Library. But we also donated books to the Friends of the North Bend Library, Friends of the Fall City Library, and Friends of the Issaquah Library. Because the only thing better than donating to one library Friends group is donating to four library Friends groups, right?!

As a member of the Friends of the Fall City Library, I’m a huge proponent of the work Friends groups do to support local library programming (their book sales are also wonderful sources for inexpensive books). That said, I’m also a huge proponent of Little Free Libraries, and these hyper-local spots for sharing books free of charge felt like the perfect places to pass along some of these donated books.

So my kids and I set out on an adventure to find as many Little Free Libraries (“LFLs”) throughout the Snoqualmie Valley as we could.

We visited fourteen of these beauties in Snoqualmie and North Bend on Thursday, then found four more in Fall City today, for a total of EIGHTEEN LFLs receiving books!

We used the Little Free Library World Map to locate nearby LFLs. One tip: many listings included addresses we could enter directly into our car’s navigation system, and several included pictures, which made the libraries significantly easier to find.

It felt like a scavenger hunt!

Each LFL had its own distinct personality, and it was fun to see all the different places people had chosen to install them. We found three in preschool parking lots, many in local parks, several on adorable residential streets, one off a busy highway, and a few on rural roads I’d never been on before.

A few of my personal highlights were:

• The LFL in the shape of a caboose (which matched the real caboose-turned-house it stood in front of)

• The LFL with loose book pages Mod Podged along its interior

• The LFL painted to match the playground equipment in the park it was located in

• The LFL using an old railroad tie as a door fastener

And the LFL featuring beautiful stained glass

Another unexpected benefit of this adventure was realizing that the Little Free Library the Girl Scouts set up in Fall City Art Park is not listed on the LFL World Map — a fact I’m now working to remedy!

In fact, there aren’t any officially listed LFLs in Fall City, but I knew I’d seen several around town in addition to ours. Sure enough, when we cruised around Fall City looking for them, we found four and added books to each one. Bonus: we got to purchase lemonade from some very entrepreneurial kiddos, who also directed us to one of the LFLs.

In the end, over 1,900 books from the Snoqualmie Elementary Book Drive made their way to students and families at STEAM Night and Field Day, four local library Friends groups, and eighteen Little Free Libraries throughout the Snoqualmie Valley.

As I told my son multiple times during our adventure, I felt just like Book Santa, secretly depositing book gifts around the Valley!

Here are some photos from our adventure. Note to self: next time I go on a spontaneous, photo-filled book mission, maybe take the extra few minutes to put on some makeup. Though honestly, a true Book Santa probably wouldn’t care . . .