A New Orleans woman probably didn’t expect to be crying when she set out to tend to her free book box this week. But that’s what happened when she found a handwritten note from a recent transplant who said he or she was from Maine. That person’s brief story put everything in perspective.

You may have heard of the Little Free Library. It’s something of a movement started in 2009 by a Wisconsin man who, in tribute to his mother, built a little model schoolhouse and used it as a box to put books, free for the taking.

Since then, Little Free Libraries have been posted all over the country. The woman who received that heartwarming note was the caretaker — Little Free Library calls them stewards, not librarians, a term which connotes a specific level of professional training — of one in New Orleans.

She wrote on Facebook that “when I got it, I was so touched I sat down on the bench and could not help but cry… it’s a reminder that we should not take literacy for granted and that there are so many people who do not know how to read. Happy to be making a difference, however small it is…”