Painted red with books on the side, woodland Hills Elementary's Little Free Library will offer students and community the chance to take a book and give a book to revamped an old newspaper box into the library which will be placed in front of the schoolIt was named Patricia Hagy's Little Free Library in honor of the school's longtime librarian who retired last year.During the school's storybook parade and performance Oct. 27 s fellow teachers surprised her with the redone box. It moved her to tears.
"This is awesome," Hagy said. "All my memories and my families memories have been made right here at this school. My son started kindergarten here, my daughter went to school and taught at Woodland Hills Elementary and I've worked here for more than 30 years. Having the chance to work with my daughter, teaching at Woodland Hills Elementary was amazing opportunity. It h been full circle."The Little Free Library is open 24/7 to allow any child or community member to take a book and either return it or replace it with another book for other readers to enjoy.
This is the second such library in the community. The other is near the Kingwood Laundromat on Loop 494. The mission of the Little Free Library is "to promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide and to build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity wisdom across generations. There are nearly 40,000 Little Free Library book exchanges around the world, bringing curbside literacy home and sharing millions of books annually," according to information provided by the Little Free Library.
Hagy and her husband have plans to donate and install benches near the library to provide a place where kids can read the books they get from the library box.The couple plan to dedicate those in memory of their son, Shaun Hagy, who died in 2014. "These benches will be very special and there just for our students and community," Hagy said. "They had first presented me with the newspaper box the end of last year, but I hadn't seen the painting and the redone library box. I didn't know they were going to redo the box; it's so great. This will be incredible for these kids. I have a lot of history here and it's great to have a peaceful place for our to kids enjoy reading. It has hard to retire, but now we can visit as many times as we want." Reference