Rob Vagle is a long-time professional writer who over the decades has sold me many, many wonderful stories. They are all different and all powerful. In this original story, he takes a very hard look those tiny libraries.

And often with Rob’s stories, saying more than that will ruin the powerful story. But I will suggest you go to https://robvagle.com/ to find out a lot more about his fantastic stories and books.

Mid-September in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area, the little libraries began sprouting in the middle of the night.

It had been a particular hot summer with a record-setting run of daytime highs of 115 degrees. It was an oven out there and the citizens of Mesa sheltered in the environmentally controlled buildings or sought shelter in the shade, preferably with misters. At that high of a temperature and with it being during monsoon season, it wasn’t a dry heat. The hotness stuck to you like grease. The air smelled like diesel exhaust and hot metal.

So when mid-September rolled around and the temperatures were ten to fifteen degrees cooler, hovering around one hundred, the relief was like a drop of water after a day of walking through the desert.

The evenings were much more cooler as well, dropping down to the high seventies. Relief had settled in the dark of night. And that wasn’t all the night brought.

There, on the seven hundred block on Dana Ave in Mesa, one of the first little libraries sprouted out of a granite front yard. The white granite as large as human thumbs clacked and clattered together like shaken dice as it tumbled out of the way for the library growing from the desert floor beneath.

Dust plumed over the front yard, in the dark, with a house with no lights on, the occupants asleep inside, with the taste of sangria still on their lips.

The little, slim library shot up, up, up, like a rocket ship out of the earth.

This little library stood six feet tall with a pointed top like a witch’s hat. Touch the side of this library and one couldn’t be sure what it was made of. It looked like plastic, but had the solid feeling of wood. In fact, the library, the structure itself, seemed alive like a stately pine tree. It smelled like paper, it smelled like polished wood. And the wind rustled the dust off its surface.

The little library was two feet wide with two tall doors with multiframed glass windows. Inside, the silver lettering on the hardback book spines glittered in the glow of the streetlight.

It stood tall, beckoning to be seen in a granite front yard that had a cracked front walk and a dead palo brea tree. A living palo brea tree is a darker shade of green from a palo verde, but being dead, this tree was brown and dark and as dry as bone. The little library was more alive than that sad tree.

This library was one of many that sprouted across the East Valley that first night. By morning, when the citizens finally awoke, two dozen libraries beckoned for readers to open their doors.

At the house with the granite yard on the seven hundred block of Dana Avenue, the renters were college students at Mesa Community College. Maya and Emily had been roommates for two years now. Maya was studying to be a journalist, while Emily was becoming a chef, which meant the meals in their household were outstanding.

The next morning, Maya was the one to first notice the little library standing in the front yard when she parted the curtain in the kitchen. In the early morning light, the little structure standing there looked like a totem pole designed by Ikea. She screamed for Emily to come look and then Maya went running out into the yard.

The landlord would be furious with this obstruction (whatever it was) in the front yard. She grew concerned they might be responsible for the removal of it, and possibly any other damages coming out of their deposit.

She wore Vans as slippers because of the dust and grit on the tile floors inside the house. Her shoes kicked at the loose granite on the walk and she stopped suddenly when she realized what the thing was in the front yard.

She saw the glass doors around the front of it, saw the books with silver lettering on the spines and she slapped the palm of her hand against her mouth. It was one of those little libraries, something she always wanted for a home of her own someday in the future. But who puts random little libraries in front yards during the night? It was like there were little library elves at work.

The granite crunched under her Vans and she touched the library’s front doors. She didn’t recognize the titles behind the glass, but that made her all the more eager to open the books and read every word.

“I wouldn’t open that if I were you.”

Maya startled, pulled back her hands and put them behind her. A man stood on the sidewalk. He stood by the waste and recycling bins. She recognized him—most of the time he walked his dogs, a Chihuahua and a Dachshund, one at a time because the two of them didn’t get along. Maya and Emily had a little joke whenever they saw him walking the Dachshund (or the Chihuahua), either she or Emily would say, “The Chihuahua (or the Dachshund) is on deck.”

“It’s just a library,” Maya said to the man (what was his name again? She didn’t even know the names of his dogs.) She thought what she had said was lame, but she felt off guard for at least two reasons this early in the morning.

“It’s not the only one,” this neighbor man said. “to appear during the night. There’s one in the parking lot of The Village Inn. The Tempe ASU campus has one these things in the middle of a flower bed. Can’t be a good sign.”

The neighbor man (she wished Emily would get out here and remind her his name) was middle-aged with thinning brown hair, tanned, leathery face, and looked fit physically. No beer gut on him. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and black cargo pants. He wore sunglasses although the sun had just gotten up and hung low in the sky.

“What do you mean appeared? Somebody put this here, right?” she said.

“Or something,” he said. “I don’t usually believe in omens. At least I didn’t until this morning when I found out these things appeared.”

It sounded paranoid but she had to agree it was weird to suddenly find a little library in the front yard. She began to grin about the paranoia (a little library was adorable) and turned her head so he wouldn’t see. She stared at the books behind the glass and one title intrigued her: Stories of What the Earth Could Be.

When her grin slipped away, she turned back to the neighbor man and found him walking down the street away from her. Then she felt guilty about taking his paranoia so lightly. New, inexplicable things were scary.

The little frames of glass within the doors were so elegant. The library was a work of art. Who would spend so much time and work on such a thing and just deposit it in somebody’s front yard, or the parking lot of a pancake house for that matter?

What could it hurt? She opened the doors and smelled paper and even a hint of fountain pen ink. She pulled out the book that had intrigued her by the title.

And all across the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area, the residents were drawn into the books.

Then each subsequent night, more little libraries sprouted throughout the valley, into Phoenix and into the West Valley. Cameras were everywhere these days with all the smartphones and special cams in doorbells and appliances, yet not one person managed to capture a little library suddenly appearing. There was always a technical malfunction. Where there were no eyes, a library would appear.

The Phoenix metro area descended into a reading frenzy. Instead of a handful of readers on the Valley Metro Light Rail, every single passenger had their noses in a book. Schoolchildren that were reluctant readers now read for hours each day. The coffee shops were packed with people reading books from the little libraries, learning about the history of Earth and the future possibilities. They read about stories with characters much like them, doing daring, kind things. They read about empathy. They read about physical and mental health. The reading gave them sustenance for the brain and spirit.

Maya devoured her first book from the library in two hours. She moved on to reading about the history of the continent of Africa, to the legends and folklore of the Himalayas, to the shipwrecks at the bottom of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

She developed an urge to write in a journal every morning, and sometimes in the evening. The reading had stimulated her imagination and ideas popped into her mind whenever she did the dishes (that was her share of the housework since Emily loved to cook) or drove the Prius to school.

People in the neighborhood stopped at the little library in their yard. There was always plenty of books, as if when one book was removed, another one was put back in its place, appearing mysteriously much like the libraries themselves. The landlord, at first, was livid about the front yard, but when he began to read the collected works of Raymond Chandler, he praised the little library that had appeared on his rental property. It spurred him on to finally remove the dead palo brea tree in the front yard so it wouldn’t detract from the beauty of the little library.

Emily read about the cuisine of ancient Greece, and read books on photography.

By October, the late afternoons were pleasant and Maya would often sit on the front porch to read. On one such day, she had finished reading an odd but enjoyable novel called The Third Policeman and walked across the yard to the library for another book.

“You didn’t listen.”

This time, Maya wasn’t surprised. She recognized the voice, and the neighbor man’s name was Scott.

He was off the sidewalk, in the street, as if he had just crossed from the other side. This time he was walking the Chihuahua (the Dachshund was on deck). He was wearing a red ball cap with an American flag plastered on the front. He was unshaven, his short-stubbed beard peppered with gray.

“Everybody is reading,” she said. “It’s like the Renaissance.”

“Like the what?”

She only smiled and opened the library doors to replace the book inside. The man, Scott, watched, eyeing the inside of the library suspiciously.

“Why don’t you read something?” she asked. “There’s something in here for everyone.”

“Not me,” Scott said. “Never me.”

By the time Maya picked another book from the library—The Superpower of the Human Immune System—Scott had moved on with walking his dog. She almost felt sorry for him. It was as if he were afraid of the light, forever cowering in the dark.

The City of Mesa announced a new event: The Reader Festival, where everybody in the community would get together and discuss what they read, what they learned, and what they hoped they could achieve by what they found in the little libraries around town.

And the libraries were still appearing. Every week or two there would be a new one in Mesa. The libraries had spread through Scottsdale and through Cave Creek. And they started to appear in Camp Verde and Sedona. The libraries appeared as far south as Tucson.

Maya started collecting stories about the reading experiences of her neighbors and the larger community.

Emily dropped a bombshell when she revealed that while cooking was still a passion, she really wanted to explore filmmaking.

By late October, the amount of daylight had shortened. Pleasant days and cool evenings where one might need a light jacket.

Just after sunset, Maya found Scott staring at the library in the yard. He wasn’t walking either dog. He was simply standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. In the light shining from the front porch, Maya could see his beard had grown longer and thicker.

“Pick one. Any one. Just read,” she said.

“I’m too far gone,” he said. “You are too far ahead of me. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Maya opened the library doors and pulled a book at random from a shelf.

“You have to start somewhere,” she said as she handed Scott the book.

When his gaze reached the book cover and the silver lettering of the title, his eyes grew wide, and Maya could see the worlds in there, ready to open, with the keys that were the books on the little library shelves.