Author Jane Green is a fan of Little Free Libraries, the kiosks or bookcases where people stock free books for passersby, but because she lives on a small private road in Westport, Conn., the usual arrangement didn't make sense. So she decided to create a mobile Little Free Library. She worked with Ryan Peterson, a recent high school graduate, to retrofit a three-wheeled cargo bike that was collecting dust in her garage. The result is what she calls the Remarkable Bookcycle, an homage to the beloved Remarkable Book Shop in Westport, which closed in 1994. (Although Green moved to town after the store was gone, owners Esther and Sidney Kramer were her neighbors, and she harbored a secret fantasy of re-opening the bright pink bookshop.)
Green shared photos of the store with Ryan, and her husband and lifelong Westport resident Ian Warburg talked about the shop. Local graphic artist Miggs Burroughs painted the sign and the well-known dancing man from the store's logo. (Burroughs had a special connection with the store: his mother, Esta Burroughs, worked at the store from its first to last day.) The Bookcycle also includes a stuffed Heathcliff the Cat in the stacks.
Green has toured Westport's Compo Beach with the Remarkable Bookcycle (pronounced bicycle), to which the community has responded. For Green, whose most recent book is The Sunshine Sisters, published by Berkley last year, that's the remarkable key to the whole venture: creating a sense of community.