Hey everyone!
See how cute this little free library is? It's in Waltham, MA and it's run by a couple of people who really want to make sure that kids and adults have access to LGBTQ+ books.
I donated two of my author copies of Miss Rita, Mystery Reader to them.
About a week or so after Miss Rita was put on the middle shelf (you can see her on the left side there with the pink and blue writing on the white spine), some person stole nearly all the books and vandalized the little library.
Naturally, I was pissed off. Removing almost the entire collection out of the library? And it looks like it was mostly the kids books. What do they think this is? (I'm not even going to make a Florida or Texas joke here. This isn't funny.)
What this is, is the United States of America, and we have freedom of speech, freedom to read what we want, freedom to love who we love, and NOT freedom to vandalize and steal other people's stuff.
So I shared these pictures on my personal Facebook page. I have a lot of kind friends who were similarly pissed off. Many of them said they'd love to donate money to replace the books.
So I thought, hmm. I run a non-profit that gives away books! I can do this!
A few days later, roughly $700 was donated to Little Book Locker, expressly for the purpose of re-filling this Little Queer Library.
It took me a while to figure out which books to buy. I mean, there are so many good books out there right now! And since it's Pride month, a bunch of them were on sale with First Book, my discount book website.
A few minutes ago I ordered about $600 worth of Pride books: some from First Book, some from Books of Wonder in NYC (Sam and I did a Pride event with them virtually last weekend and it was really fun), and some from another indie bookstore I like. They are beautiful. I have about $100 left so that'll be fun to spend on a few more books.
Also--I told my publisher, FSG Young Readers (a division of MacMillan), about Little Book Locker, and they donated a whole carton of books! So some of those will go to the Little Queer Library too.
Another note: some people in my town saw my post about the LQL and thought, we need more of these. So now a local church and some passionate allies are organizing and plotting and scheming how to make it come to life.