Duane Yazzie was waiting at an intersection in Boston, Mass., where he was attending a conference in 2017, when he noticed the kiosk of books.

It was a Little Free Library. “Take a book; share a book,” the sign said.

Duane took three books. As he walked, he saw two more little libraries. What a wonderful way to encourage people to read, he thought.

Duane is a teacher and reading specialist at Tséhootsooi Diné Bi Ołta' School in Window Rock on the Navajo Nation. He grew up on the reservation.

He works with small groups of students, and he suggested to a group of advanced readers, four sixth-grade girls, a Little Free Library as a service learning project.

"Reading has the power to transport us and move us beyond the present," Duane said. To show readers what's possible, the places they could go.

"I want everyone just to fall in love with reading, to truly love the simple act of being with a book, surrounded by words and language," he said. That's more important than test scores or reading levels.

The girls — Adrianna Begay, Jade Foster, Corey Owens and Christina Yazzie — got on the Little Free Library website and studied the map of 80,000 registered libraries around the world.

There wasn’t one on the Navajo Nation, not in 25,000 square miles.

They decided to put up the first Little Free Library on the reservation.

The girls wrote letters to drum up support, pitching the idea to literacy groups. A library costs $150 to $400 to get going.

The Northern Arizona Reading Council, of which Duane was a member, bought the library and had it delivered to his classroom. The "library" is a red box with two shelves, a plexiglass door and slanted roof. It sits atop a post that anchors the box.

They had to find a place to put it.

Their first choice, the busy flea market, turned them down, but across the street was a shopping center with a grocery store, bank, places to eat and a laundromat. Nathan Begay, CEO of Navajo Nation Shopping Centers, gave them permission to put it there.

It took some doing. Principal Audra Platero and the Window Rock Unified School District board agreed to donate books and help with required permits. Businesses offered trees and benches.

On June 21, 2018, the library opened. Duane was delighted to see people picking out books from the start. Dianne Salerni's "The Inquisitor's Mark." "Slacker" by Gordon Korman. Cara Alwill Leyba's "Girl Code."

Duane was out for dinner with his mom not long ago, and they watched from a distance as a young couple picked out books from the little library.

“This is why, mom,” he told his mother. “This is why we did this.”

And it's why he wanted to do more.

Duane talked to his fellow members of the Window Rock-Fort Defiance Lions Club about putting up more libraries.

They applied for a grant from the Little Free Library Impact Library Program, which gives free libraries to communities without resources. They got three more.

Exactly a year after the first Little Free Library opened, Yazzie and his students opened a second one at the Tséhootsooí Medical Center in Fort Defiance, the community where Duane was born and raised.

The third will open in August at RezRefuge, a community center serving the Rio Puerco Acres neighborhood in Fort Defiance.

Now where to put the last one?

This time, Duane was working with a group of fourth-graders, struggling readers who were enthusiastic about the project.

They wrote letters to bookstores, asking for donations. Boxes arrived regularly.

Three students suggested they put one in Navajo, N.M., 30 miles from Window Rock.

“Mr. Yazzie, it’s not the best place, but it would be nice to have one,” one student said.

Duane hesitated. It’s a tough area. He thought how the first library had been vandalized twice, the door knob stolen, and the plexiglass door broken and then repaired.

“When something bad happens, you can slump and give up, or you can be like a phoenix and rise again,” Duane said.

It was important to the kids. “I think it says to them, ‘We matter,’” he said.

A library at Dził Ditł’ooí School of Empowerment, Action and Perseverance, a small charter school in Navajo, will open in August.

In May, Duane received the Little Free Library’s Todd H. Bol Award for Outstanding Achievement.

“It’s not just me,” Duane said. “It’s an entire community vested in this.”

The kids are learning lessons, bigger than the importance of reading and writing.

Their teacher told them, “You have so much power in your voice, in how you express yourself. You have the power to transform our community. You have the power to transform the world, not just for you but for others, too.”

Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KarinaBland.

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