DOWAGIAC — Hardware junkies looking for a tool or two at Hale’s True Value Hardware might also leave with a new book to bring home to their loved ones.

The newest Little Free Library in the community sits outside of Hale’s True Value Hardware and greets customers and community members as they walk inside or past the storefront.

The Pokagon Fund awarded a grant to the Little Free Library program to install 12 libraries throughout the three wards of Dowagiac. The Pokagon Fund is funded by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. As new libraries are unveiled, new partnerships between the designers and stewards are created.

As the program was offering a contest for people to design little free libraries, Stephanie Lyons saw the post and thought it would be a fun project to do with her daughter, Avery.

While they were unable to actually house the library at their home, Randy Hale, one of the owners of Hale’s True Value Hardware, agreed to have the library stationed outside his store. Hale, a long-time supporter of the city, has also let the school use his store’s parking lot as a bus stop for many years.

“It’s a good program for the community,” Hale said, standing next to the library decorated with book spines, including “Junie B. Jones,” “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Harry Potter” books. “It gives people the opportunity to get books that they might not normally see and know about.”

As the Lyons were decorating their Little Free Library, they also helped unpack and sort 47 cases of books purchased through the grant to be distributed at the 12 libraries throughout the three wards. During the sorting, Avery found her favorite book, “Caps for Sale,” written and illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina.

“The book is about a man who sells hats, and instead of carrying them, he stacks them on top of his head,” Avery said. “He goes out and yells, ‘Caps for sale! 50 cents a cap.’ Nobody comes, so he goes out of town, and he’s tired and sits on a tree and some monkeys take his hats.”

The rest of the book is dedicated to the man trying to get his caps back from the monkeys.

The mother and daughter duo agreed that once all the libraries were up, they would maybe go on a scavenger hunt to try to find “Caps for Sale.”

While Lyons and Avery worked on their designs for the Little Free Library, they had no idea where its permanent home would be. When Lyons found out it would be at Hale’s True Value Hardware, she was excited.

“I was excited it was going to be somewhere people would see it,” she said. “Also, that it was well protected, and that I think it would see a lot of traffic.”

Avery noticed a lot of books she had initially stocked in her first visit to the library had already been taken when she returned for a second visit.

The mother and daughter duo have had fun getting to spend time together throughout the process, they said, and already, Hale said he has noticed the Little Free Library’s popularity among his customers.

“There has been people in and out of it, and it’s been good,” he said.