Woman Transforms 110-Year-Old Tree Into A Little Free Library

What do you do with a 110-year-old dead tree that needs to be torn down? Most people would simply have the thing removed, but one woman had a better idea.

Librarian, artist, and former bookbinder from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Sharalee Armitage Howard, transformed the old tree in her front yard into a miniature free library for the neighborhood. There’s been a number of Free Little Libraries showing up around towns and communities all over the world the past few years — but this one you really have to see to appreciate fully.

We are living in a new age of information where everything is available at the click of a button. With this in mind, there is nothing that comes quite as close to reading off a page, feeling the paper pass through your hands and the smell of a book.

To make sure that books are easily accessible to as many people as possible, a nonprofit organization called Little Free Library is building little libraries in hopes of “inspiring a love of reading, building community, and sparking creativity by fostering neighborhood book exchanges around the world.”

The organization has created over 75,000 libraries in 88 countries so far. But one of the coolest Little Free Libraries out there has to be the one Sharalee made with her family.

Sharalee carved out the stump, added a roof, and made the interior nice and cozy so friends and neighbors would feel welcome to use her unique little library.

She said:

“Someone willing to take the time to give new life to a stump would never cut down a healthy tree to do it. It was dropping HUGE branches for years onto the sidewalk and street (even without windy weather). We were really worried about someone getting hurt. One finally hit our son’s car.

The average lifespan of a cottonwood tree is merely 40-50 years… so it got to live more than twice that already!”

After her initial post went viral, Sharalee shared even more images of her personal library on Facebook.

Watch the video here: