There's nothing' like curling up with a good book on a rainy day like this, .For some folks, getting a book is as easy as walking out their front door and down their driveway to something called the ‘Little Free Library.’  They look like birdhouses but they are filled with donated books and they are popping up all over this city, including outside Jack Castell’s house on Featherston Drive in south end Ottawa.  The 13-year-old loves to read and when he's done a good book, he likes to see it go to a good home for someone else to enjoy.

‘Since books are so expensive,’ says Jack, ‘I figured that I’m done reading one of them, I can pass it on.’

Jack and his grandfather built the ‘Little Free Library’ outside his house; the idea was fashioned after a movement that started in the States. In 2009,Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, built a model of a one room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother who was a former school teacher and loved reading. He filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. His neighbors and friends loved it. He built several more and gave them away. Each one had a sign that said ‘Free Book.’  An idea was born, that has since spread to more than 70 countries, with 32,000 Little Free Libraries.

The concept is to promote literacy and build community; you leave a book or you take a book.  It is a free book exchange.

‘It’s a way of sharing,’ says Marina Lamont, who stops frequently at the Little Free Library down the street from her house near Main Street, ‘I really like it.’

Ottawa has about a dozen of them now, sprinkled throughout the city.  A beautiful one stands outside an apartment building on Argyle. Pam Johnson Butler and Chris Butler erected one at their house off Main Street about two years ago. It is a miniature doppelganger of their own house.

‘I asked my husband to make me a little box on a post,’ says Johnson Butler, ‘and he decided to make it look like our house.’

They have been conversation starters, prompting neighbours to meet neighbours.

‘We've had tons of people we know on our street stop by,’ says Chris Butler, ‘and now people in cars we don't know  dropping off books.’

‘It’s a great excuse to say ‘hi’ when they're at the Little Free Library,’ says Juliann Castel, Jack’s mother, ‘It's been great for the neighbourhood.’

If you're interested in starting one, there is a website with some great tips at www.littlefreelibrary.org.