A County Armagh teacher whose love of books inspired her to open a ‘free little library’ and share that joy with others is about to embark on an exciting new chapter.
The next page in the story of Portadown’s ’Seagoe Park Free Little Library’ is ready to be turned and Karla McClatchey is thrilled to share the news.
Over these past years, thousands of books have passed through the tiny library box, prettily painted in pink and located just outside Karla’s home.
Bookworms – who will happily tell you there’s no such thing as ‘too many books’ with lengthy TBR piles to back it up – will now be able to access so many more titles and much, much more besides.
For the Seagoe Park little library is about to get a little bit larger, and that’s a ‘win win’ for Karla and all those who love to visit then head homeward with their next great read.
Thanks to a very generous donation, a new ‘six by eight’ feet walk-in library will this week be put in place and, when painted with shelves installed, should be bursting at the seams with books to appeal to all ages and, of course, all tastes.
It’s a magnificent achievement for Karla, who has given so much of her time to establishing and keeping the little library so well-stocked; not because she has to, but because she genuinely wants to, as she strives to share her passion for books – and many great benefits – so that others might fall in love with reading too.
As she eagerly looked ahead to her new library’s arrival this week, Karla took time out to speak to Armagh I to share with us her story, not just about how it all came to be, but why she feels compelled to keep those books, quite literally, flying off the shelves!
“The library in its current form started about eight years ago, but actually I’ve been doing libraries from well before that,” she explains.
“As a child, I loved and read books and I always shared them with my friends and then I became an English teacher. So since about the age of 22, I had my own classroom and I always had little free libraries at the back of those classrooms.
“I worked down in Belfast for 14 years and it was just shocking how many of the kids did not have access to books. So I got into reading and reviewing on online platforms and eventually I started to get quite a few books sent to me as well. To me, it just seemed a real shame to have these just languishing on my shelves, so any books that I know that I’m not going to read again, I thought, right, what am I going to do with these?”.
There’s always plenty of great books to choose from!
Mind made up, Karla enlisted the help of husband, Charles, to craft the little library and was delighted with the end result.
And when the pandemic came along and life pretty much ground to a halt for many, it really came into its own…
“I’d asked him to build me one of these little free libraries – I keep seeing them all across America,” adds Karla.
“I knew that the council here tried to establish ones in the likes of Lurgan Park and around the Lough and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was one in our area? At the time we were living just off the Killycomain Road, and the timing just before lockdown. When lockdown came, people came every single day and it was literally at the mouth of the road and it was absolutely brilliant.
“Then I became a carer full-time and I moved across with my grandmother into the Seagoe Park area. When the library moved, it kind of lost some of the people that were coming with it, so I thought last year, let’s get this library onto Facebook and get the people from the area just to come into the housing area, so that’s what we did, and it’s just kind of flourished more and more.
“Originally it was about getting a slightly bigger library that would have access for children at their height level, for disability access, and then it just needed a bigger library again. So we expanded it a little last year and have the two boxes.
“But this year it has just grown so much. I have so many people travelling from all different areas. I’ve got families and the library just isn’t big enough. I thought I really need to grow this. I knew that the need was there and I thought, well, people need to be patient just until I save the money. I do substitute teaching, but I’m still a carer for most of my time, but then I had a very kind family member step forward with a donation of the new library which is due to arrive this week.”
Karla knows that the new ‘premises’ will make such a difference and is positively bursting with ideas which will add further to the library’s already huge appeal.
“It’ll just make such a difference,” says Karla. “A couple of Saturdays ago, I had that many people coming, there was about 200 books left the library. I was running up and down the path, about every 15 minutes, and I just could not carry books to it fast enough. My entire living room floor was covered with so many kind donations.
“I had people coming from Draperstown and I was going, ‘oh wow, this is amazing’. I’m just so humbled that people are willing to come so far to support it. It’s majorly the people from our own community, from Portadown and surrounding areas, form the main part, but it’s lovely just to have regulars that come all of the time. I’ve got families that come. I’ve got individuals and people who have just come back to reading after years and years. So it’s really special.
“It’ll be lovely just to have that new bigger library open where people can just come and help themselves. It really is run by the community. I just kind of facilitate it. They’re the ones that keep it going. They keep the donations coming in and they keep coming because they love to use it with their family. It’s just wonderful to see.
“It just means now they can come and it’ll be sheltered, it’ll be dry. There’ll be access for all of our children, for adults, for disabilities, just that they can come in straight off the footpath into a six by eight shed. It’ll still be the same format. It’ll be bright pink, because that’s what people have come to know as the little pink library.
“Hopefully it should be up and running within the next week. We need to get it shelved, floor to ceiling.
The kids will simply love it and the new bigger library arriving this week will offer more space and allow for an even greater choice!
“I’m excited about the expansion too, because it’s not just books. There’s teddy bears, there’s tea, there’s coffee, and it’ll mean things like a toy swap, board games, jigsaws, which we’ve introduced the odd bit of but will be able to be permanent. Even just for dog walkers, I thought, we’ll have some dog bags and some little treats in there for pets as well. It’ll just make it a whole community thing.”
For Karla, she is a great advocate for reading, recognising its many positive benefits.
And she is always keen to encourage anyone who may not presently find themselves drawn to a book to simply give it a go!
A little reading, she argues, can bring a lot of rewards…
“When I have my English teacher head on, I always talk to my kids about the importance of reading. I speak about this online, about a magic 15 minutes, and I cannot stress that enough. Having just nursed a grandmother through dementia, reading just 15 minutes a day helps develop neural pathways that can help stave off conditions like that, and just for your own mental health, how good it is.
“It can be a social thing as well. I’m part of so many reading groups, both online and in person, and just talking to other people. Even this library gives me the opportunity to speak to members of the public and them to me about what they’re reading, what they’re loving, who their favourite authors are. You make so many different friends and meet so many different people of all different age groups, but the benefits, just even to your health, is absolutely amazing.
“There’s benefits for education too. I teach children, and it’s kind of based on accelerated reader, where every child improves on their own learning. I talk about the 15 minutes, that it gives you an extra 1.6 million words a year, as opposed to somebody who reads for just one minute has 6,000 words. So that difference between 6,000 words and 1.6 million is just vast, and the difference is performing in the top 90% as opposed to the bottom 10% academically.
Fantastic choice and free too – but book donations are always welcome!
“So there’s many different things. It gives you the confidence, not just to write in English and speak in English, but just to be more social, to do well across all different subjects. The benefits are amazing for everybody.”
Two of Karla’s friends, also bitten by the booklovers’ bug, were inspired to open their own community libraries off the back of her efforts.
Victoria-Jane McCandless created her own in Donaghcloney, while Kirsty Wilding established the Hobson Park Free Little Library in Portadown.
Karla is delighted by what they have done and hopes that others will follow.
“I got my husband to build another one in the Clounagh Centre, the teacher training centre just off the Brownstown Road in Portadown,” she explains. “He’s had other colleagues saying, ‘oh, yes, we’ll set one up in our centre’. I’ve had a few teachers come to me from different local schools and saying we want to set up this in our school. Can you help us with this? And I’ve helped give them ideas and provided books as well.
“A few primary school teachers are setting some up in their classrooms. For me, it’s not about promoting just my library, it’s about promoting literacy, community-wide. It’s about getting the books out there and getting them circulating, so the more the merrier. There was talk of a few people trying to set some up in places like Bleary. They’ve got really great community support, but they just weren’t able to do that themselves, but hopefully somebody else will take the baton and get that up and running.”
There are no rules when it comes to the Seagoe Park Free Little Library. It’s there to be used and enjoyed by all.
And, of course, donations are always gratefully received to help keep those pages turning!
“There’s quite a few people will return theirs again for other people to use,” says Karla. “Then there’s some people just want to keep a book and hold on to it for their own collections, which is perfectly fine.
“There’s no obligation to bring another book, but obviously if you turn up and lift 60 and never bring another one, it doesn’t really work very well. It’s on a trust thing. We’re hoping eventually that you will bring a book or some books back to help refill the library. I mean, not everybody can afford to do that or isn’t in the place to do that and that’s perfectly fine. You know, feel free to take the books and keep them as well.”
Karla – who has a fondness for thrillers, particularly by home-grown writers such as Stuart Neville and Steve Cavanagh – admits she will cheerfully “read absolutely everything and anything and in any format as well”.
But it’s everyone’s personal taste, everyone’s choice.
So if you would like to see what Karla currently has on the shelves, and feel inspired to pick up a book, you’re more than welcome to visit the free little library at 26 Seagoe Park, Portadown.
In terms of access, that’s not an issue…
For the new library, like the old, will be open ’24/7’, as Karla proudly adds: “The door is always open for people when they want to come and browse.”
To keep up to date on developments and regular updates on the great selection of books in stock, be sure to follow Seagoe Park Free Little Library on Facebook.
