by
José Pérez
@jose_3_perez
The
City of Sunrise recently launched the Little Free Library initiative, a program
designed to make books more accessible to more people in the
community. City leaders, local educators, students, and
neighbors came to the Sunrise Village Multipurpose Center in City Park for a
ribbon-cutting to celebrate the Little Free Library project – with a little bit
of starpower.
Along
with residents, two special guests joined the ribbon-cutting. Noted
author Edwidge Danticat made a surprise appearance at the event, which was a
special treat for Ashley Jones, an aspiring poet who is a student at Florida
International University’s MFA program, who was also invited by organizers to
read some of her poems to the children during a “Sidewalk Story Time.”
Jones was surprised and thrilled to get a chance to meet and read
her work on the same program as Danticat. “I can’t believe I’m here,”
Jones said rather bashfully.
Sunrise’s
Little Free Libraries were brought to life by local high school students who
participate in the Sunrise Leadership Academy (SLA). The SLA
meets each month to learn more about leadership, policy, and more.
The Little Free Library project was a special one for the SLA students and Miami-based artist G.G. who's been working with the students.
“It’s a great program,” said Camilo Isaza, a student at Western High School,
“I’m grateful to be a part of it.”
For
Sunrise Mayor Michael J Ryan, the event was “a celebration of the power of an
idea.”
“The
power of literacy,” said Ryan, is that reading a good book “takes us on an
adventure.”
That
idea was shared and embodied by both Danticat and Jones, two artists with a
love for the power of their craft to touch people – especially when the writer
and her audience can share the same physical space. “When you see the
faces,” said Danticat, “you see that the magic of the story is still possible.”
This was evident by the contagious laughter from the children as Jones read a
charming ode she wrote to the quirks of the grade school lunch forgotten by so
many adults.
A
good story will take the reader to “a place you never imagined,” said Danticat,
who talked about the wonder of what she called “the willingness to disbelieve”
on the part of a reader, allowing him- or herself to be transported, to be
“dissolved into the world of the story.” This, in fact, is the
theme of Eight Days, a story about a little boy who used his
imagination to escape the fear and confinement of being trapped under rubble
after Port-au-Prince’s deadly 2010 earthquake.
Although
in her early twenties, Jones saw another side of the magic of
storytelling: nostalgic time travel. For her, a good story
can transport a reader back to “a world of memories” carried upon “lyrical
thoughts.”
Danticat
and Jones also reveled in the opportunity to be present in the ribbon-cutting
for Sunrise’s Little Free Libraries. “I like outeach,” said Jones. “It is
a chance to be a part of something to put back.” Danticat said that being
at the ribbon-cutting was “acknowledging what it would have meant for me as a
girl” to have a writer read his or her own story in person.
The first Little Free
Library was started in Wisconsin just four years ago. The idea is
simple: “Take a book, leave a book.” With the creation of
four Little Free Library locations in Sunrise, that city joins communities in
Mexico, Haiti, India, Lithuania and more where people can walk up to an old
newspaper box and check out a book in exchange for another
one.
Organizers
say that that the titles available at Sunrise’s Little Free Libraries will
rotate. For the launch of the program, readers can look forward to
works by writers such as Julia Alvarez, David Chabon, Dan Gutman, Sandra
Cisneros, Sandra Boynton, and, of course, Danticat herself.
Smartly-designed booklets of Jones’ poems were given away as gifts to those in
attendance.
Additional information is available at www.sunrisefl.gov/books.
