Our book fairies are busy around the world, encouraging people to read more books – and also share them with strangers! You can currently find book fairy Jade running a pop-up library in Auckland, New Zealand – until 17th June.

From Jade, a New Zealand Book Fairy

“I was going about my usual bookfairying business in the city and had to stop by lunch one Friday afternoon. I wanted to quickly grab some chips from a place across the wharf and found myself at No 1 Queen Street Bar & Café. I noticed a caravan inside the property and a sign that says email the General Manager if anyone had any community ideas for putting it to good use.

The caravan has done its route for food truck events, serving dumplings over the summer and hot soup last winter. It had a cool kitchen set-up inside and the front opens out for service. By a strange coincidence, I was reading about pop-up libraries happening in New York right before lunch and knew I just had to do one. Call it serendipity, but ending up in that area for lunch lead to one of my most exciting Book Fairy projects for Auckland.

My husband and my little book fairy helped me set it up today (Tuesday, 06 June). We bought three old wine crates off TradeMe for $15, printed out the A3 posters letting people know how it works and got some sticky tack to put it up. Less than $20, the generosity of people and the support of The Book Fairy organization — that was all it took to get this fab idea running!

Within the first few minutes, people were flocking to the pop-up library – some browsing, a few taking books. Heard one person say, “Awww, I wish I brought my books today!”) It’s so heartwarming to see people responding to it positively.

The Book Fairy Pop-up Library will be at the corner of Queen St and Quay St until the 17th of June. The café/bar is open from 6:30am til late, so the library will have the same hours. I will be dropping by every day to re-fill the book stock and say hi to anyone who wants to know more about the wonderful world of the Book Fairies!”

Jade, how has the first day gone?

“Putting together The Book Fairies’ Pop-up Library was an amazing experience! From planning to preparing the books and setting up, it was such an exhilarating day. The first day was a success! People started checking out our collection right away and a few books were already taken in the first hour after we finished setting up. It felt great interacting with people and seeing how much they appreciate what the book fairies do. I would definitely want to do it again.”

Jade is one of our Official Book Fairies, and you can find her on instagram at @bookfairies_newzealand and twitter @bookfairies_nz