“Bookleggers Library” offers free books, including ones banned in schools

By Trish Christakis

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    MIAMI (WFOR) — It’s the first of its kind in Miami: the one and only free bookstore.

“Bookleggers Library” started as mobile store and has since transformed into a storefront in Wynwood.

What started to get people reading more has turned into a deeper meaning now that certain books have been banned in Florida schools.

Not many things are free any more – but this is.

It’s not a library. You don’t check it out and return it. It’s yours to keep.

“You can take a book from us and read it in five years,” Nathaniel Sandler, the founding director of Bookleggers Library, said. “It’s OK for the book to sit on your shelf. We don’t want people to feel the pressure to read it within a constricted time.”

Sandler started this as a way to give free books to underserved communities but there’s a deeper meaning now.

“A lot of the books being banned now are subjects like Black American studies, LGBTQ,” he said. “We have sections for all kinds of people. We do not censor books”

Sandler created areas for what could be a banned book.

He said with literature censored or removed from the reach of young minds, it’s more important now than ever to have bookstores like this.

“We consider ourselves the last line of defense against a book being banned,” Sandler said. “We have literally taken them out of the dumpster on several occasions.”

The nonprofit stays afloat by donations and volunteers…

When this idea came about roughly 12 years ago, without realizing what the future would hold, they named it Bookleggers, which literally means a person who illegally sells books.

“Even the name itself is about moving printed material, in secretive and shadowy ways so the organization was conceived in defiance of book bannings,” Sandler said.

They’re more than just a book store though. They also bring their mobile book van to neighborhoods and give out books to children.

“Books still have magic,” he said. “And we can’t give our entire information ecosystem over to the phone. We need books because the internet does not have everything.”

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