Smithville lions club builds library box to encourage reading

The Smithville Noon Lions Club has built a little library box that it will set up at MLK Park on Dec. 3. The box was created to encourage reading by Smithville residents of all ages.

By Andy Sevilla
Posted Nov 26, 2019 at 5:01 AM

The Smithville Noon Lions Club has built a little library box to provide easy access to books for adults, teens and children who may not be able to readily make it to the Smithville Public Library.

Leah Saunders, the group’s immediate past president, initiated the idea of creating a little library modeled after the blessing boxes the lions club had set up in town three years ago, said Otilia Sanchez, the lion who coordinated the box’s design, construction and donation of books.

The Smithville Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony for the little library box on Dec. 3 at MLK Park, where the little library box will be set up next to the lions club’s blessing box already standing there.

“If residents are using the blessing box, perhaps they would also pick up books when they walk up to it,” Sanchez said.

The club’s board approved the creation of the library box, and John Ertz, a Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department firefighter, volunteered to build it. The chamber donated the construction materials and the Smithville Public Library donated books, bookmarks and book bags to fill the box, Sanchez said.

The little library box has four book compartments for different age groups, and paperback, soft-cover and hardback books — both fiction and nonfiction — will be placed in their appropriate compartments, Sanchez said.

“The Lions Little Library is for all residents of all ages — anyone may take a book or leave a book or, for that matter, more than one book,” Sanchez said. “All reading materials placed in the Lions Little Library must be in good condition; they do not have to be new.”

Sanchez said the need for books to broaden the mind, allow residents to explore places they may never get to visit or to broaden horizons exists in every community.

“In Smithville specifically, I believe that students will benefit from having a little library where they may find books that they enjoy or that are required reading,” she said. “The latter is especially important because books on the required reading lists may be checked out at the public library; the Lions Little Library can potentially resolve that issue.”

In 2016, the lions club set up a pair of blessing boxes in downtown Smithville that carry snacks, toiletries and canned goods to anyone in need, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Residents can place items such as toothpaste, juice boxes, first aid kits and ramen noodles in the blessing boxes, and those who wish can stop by and take what they need.

The pair of blessing boxes were placed at the Smithville Community Gardens on Rivers Street and at Harts Chapel on Martin Luther King Road. Club members said at the time that the boxes were cleared out almost immediately after they were first set up. The blessing box at Smithville Community Gardens was relocated last year to MLK Park.

In a separate blessing box project, a group of neighbors in the rural Antioch Road and Gotier Trace area in between Bastrop and Smithville, including Sanchez, erected a blessing box in that area in 2017 for residents who need a little help.

That box was installed just before Thanksgiving in front of Antioch Cemetery after getting permission from the Antioch Cemetery Association. Ertz also built that box.

“The blessing boxes are never full because there is someone who always is in need of something,” Sanchez said. “There’s a great need for these boxes in our community.”