Little Free Cookbook Libraries Serve Up Community and Joy

There’s a cookbook version of that saying, “The best things in life are free.”

It plays out every day at the Little Free Cookbook Libraries outside the Bothell, Green Lake Aurora and View Ridge PCC stores, where shoppers and visitors drop off cookbooks they no longer want or pick up new titles to bring home.

With hundreds of daily passerbys, the boxes are active and loved. Personally, I could have assembled a first-rate — and enormous — cookbook collection just through my years browsing the Little Free Cookbook Library box outside PCC’s Green Lake Aurora store. I drop off my own review copies of new books in that box when I’m done with them, I snag the occasional treasure for my own kitchen keeper shelf — but mostly I just marvel at the ever-changing finds.

Every classic and popular title seems to come through that Little Free Cookbook Library at some point or other (as well as plenty of lesser-knowns), from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The Moosewood Cookbook (multiples!) to The Zuni Café Cookbook and hits from the Barefoot Contessa. The next day — or sometimes, checking back at the end of that shopping trip — the top treasures have been swapped out for others. Sometimes the box stands empty, but never for long. Co-op shoppers, understandably, seem to love both cookbooks and community.

Sometimes it’s easy to tell when a themed collection has been dropped off at the box, such as a block of titles from Seattle stars like Tom Douglas (“Tom’s Big Dinners”) and Leslie Mackie (“the Macrina Bakery and Café Cookbook) and Aran Goyoaga (“Cannelle et Vanille Bake Simple.”) Other finds are one-offs, in recent months I’ve seen Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise, Maida Heatter’s New Book of Great Desserts. The Barbecue Bible,  Beekeeping for Dummies, The Gourmet Cookbook, Nigella Lawson’s Cook Eat Repeat. One day I reluctantly passed on a fine collection of old Fine Cooking magazines, but did pull out a stack of 1970s small-print health food books, obscure treasures that I mailed to a food historian friend.

PCC’s Little Free Cookbook Libraries

The cookbook libraries were meant to create a sense of community when they opened in 2017, as a riff on the popular Little Free Library movement, recalled Heather Snavely, who was PCC’s vice president of marketing at the time, and is now CEO of AAA Washington. PCC stocked them initially with finds from Goodwill, but they soon became self-sustaining. They’ve come and gone at some stores, affected by issues including renovations and pandemic shutdowns.

In the bigger picture, they were part of a tsunami of creative Puget Sound participation in that Little Free Library phenomenon.

The simple boxes with latched doors, generally set on a post, were originated by a Wisconsin man named Todd Bol in 2009. Bol set up a box in his front yard, encouraging people to take a book or leave a book (or both.)

The idea turned into a global nonprofit that now features more than 200,000 registered libraries. The registered libraries, each with its own charter number, can be found on the Little Free Library site. Specialized libraries are far rarer than general interest ones, but do exist for categories other than cookbooks: Specific “LFL’s” feature banned books, children’s books, science fiction, poetry and more. The nonprofit’s “Read in Color” initiative brings diverse books to participating boxes.

Seattle is a city of readers – a UNESCO City of Literature, home to the first “One City, One Book” program (founded by Nancy Pearl, the only celebrity librarian), able to support beloved independent bookstores from the stalwart Elliott Bay Book Co. to a recent romance bookmobile, not to mention the Book Larder, a store devoted to cookbooks.

But the city’s also branched out with unusual vigor into other “Little Free” concepts, including originating the  first known Little Free Bakery, a concept that’s spread to many neighborhoods and even states. For budding gardeners, there are an abundance of seed libraries, whose origins have a link to Seattle’s 1999 WTO protests. A rich collection of Little Free Pantries got their start in Columbia City and are stewarded throughout the city.

The generosity built into the Little Free movement runs 24-7, but feels especially meaningful at this time of year and this moment in time.

It’s like a mix of The Joy of Cooking (which occasionally shows up in PCC’s boxes) and the sheer joy of giving.