She Couldn't Be At Her Grandchild's Birth, So She Built A Library

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — When Patricia Manley Silverman learned that she wouldn't be at her first grandchild’s birth because of the pandemic, she decided to mark the occasion on her front lawn in Bayside.

A school secretary and “avid reader,” who herself read to her children from the time they were in utero, Silverman decided to honor her grandchild with a Little Free Library — a give-one, take-one book exchange, which she officially unveiled on Thursday Aug. 12, her granddaughter’s birthday.

“I’m dedicating it to my first grandchild to foster [her] love of reading,” she told Patch.

Since Little Free Libraries are personal initiatives that cost money to register — a point that library scholars have criticized — the free book kiosks aren’t evenly distributed across the city. The group's official map only shows two libraries throughout all of southeast Queens, whereas there are eight exchanges in Astoria and Long Island City alone.

Silverman found that Little Free Libraries were largely absent in Bayside, too, with only two registered in the neighborhood. (The map, however, only shows registered libraries, and some neighbors mentioned on Facebook that there are others in the area.)

In any case, neither of the registered libraries in Bayside were near Silverman’s block — 33rd Avenue between Corporal Kennedy and 210 streets — which she saw as the perfect location for a book exchange.

“There’s a constant flow of people moving by my house,” she said, pointing out that teens walk by on their way to-and-from Bayside High School, and that families park nearby to go to Raymond O’Connor and Crocheron parks.

“There’ll be a lot of foot traffic, and people can just walk by on the sidewalk and help themselves,” Silverman said.

And, after posting on Nextdoor and Facebook to see if any neighbors wanted to donate books, it became clear that people wanted to participate in the effort — when we spoke, Silverman had spent the morning fielding drop-offs, leaving her with upwards of 50 books.

“I'm going to have too many books for this cabinet,” she said, adding that she might put extras on a table near the library, or continue to fill it up as people take books.

Silverman is organizing the three-shelf bookcase based on reading level, with titles for adults on the top shelf, books for teens in the middle, and baby books on the bottom.

Already, she’s accumulated a diversity of books for readers of different ages and backgrounds — a point that Little Free Library stresses, and Amplify Library, an NYC-based initiative centering books by Black authors, has taken on in the city, too.

“The first delivery I got was an array of books in Italian, German, and Arabic,” said Silverman, explaining that the neighbor who dropped off the books had a daughter who worked in translation.

When Silverman is able to visit her grandchild, she has a few books in mind that she’ll bring, but until then she’s focused on her Bayside Little Free Library collection.

“I want to encourage a love of reading for my grandchild, and I’d like to do that for the community, too,” she said.

Silverman’s Little Free Library is on the front lawn of her house, which is located at 209-42 33rd Avenue in Bayside.