Branches Made of Paperbacks: How a Withdrawn-Book Tree Became Luverne's December Ritual

Every December, the most photographed object in Luverne Public Library is not a book. It is a tree made of books that nobody wanted anymore, and every branch of it is holding somebody's handwriting.

The Book Tree goes up on the circulation desk the first week of December and comes down on January 6. In between, it collects a few hundred handwritten memories from patrons — most on index cards, some on the backs of old due-date slips, one memorable year on a napkin that staff laminated out of pure respect. If you have ever wondered why a public library would stack forty retired hardcovers into a cone and zip-tie them to a tomato cage, here is the story, branch by branch.

It Began With a Cart Nobody Wanted

The tradition goes back to December 2011, when a circulation clerk named Ruth Halvorsen was handed a cart of books damaged by a radiator that had been leaking quietly all fall. Musty, warped, water-stained along the bottom edges — nothing anyone would want to read, and nothing worth cataloging a decision about.

Ruth stacked them on the desk while she waited for a straight answer about disposal. A kid came through with her grandmother, pointed at the pile, and asked whether it was a tree.

Ruth went home that night, came back the next morning with a tomato cage from her garage, and the thing has gone up every December since. She retired in 2019. The cage is still in the supply closet with her handwriting on the shelf label: TREE CAGE. DO NOT THROW AWAY.

How a Book Becomes a Branch

The build takes about three hours, four staff members, and one drill.

First comes the sorting. Only books that are already past saving qualify — water damage, missing pages, a spine that gave up in 2008. Nothing that could go to the Friends of the Library sale, and nothing that a patron might still be waiting on. Those rules are not negotiable, and they get re-explained every year to somebody eager to donate a perfectly good novel to the cause.

Next, each book gets a small hole drilled through the cover so it can be zip-tied to the cage. This is the part where new staff learn that drilling a book feels wrong for about ninety seconds and then feels great.

The shape builds from the bottom up: heavy large-print hardcovers at the base for ballast, trade paperbacks in the middle, mass-market paperbacks near the top where the cage narrows. The topper is a five-point star cut from a withdrawn atlas, clipped on with a binder clip, because the angel we tried in 2014 fell over twice and once onto a patron.

A string of warm-white LEDs gets wound through the gaps. One year a bulb died and half the tree went dark for a week. We called it a power outage and moved on.

The Part That Isn't Decoration

Starting in mid-November, blank cards appear at the circulation desk with a simple prompt: leave us a book memory. Anything. A title, a person, a reason.

The answers are the whole point. People write about a mother who read to them in this exact building. A farmer writes about checking out the same small-engine repair manual three winters running and finally buying his own copy. A kid wrote that the tree smells like her grandma's basement, which staff chose to take as a compliment. Someone leaves a card every year about a spouse who has died, always the same sentence, always in the same blue pen.

Staff tuck the finished cards between pages — low near the base if the pile is heavy that week, higher up as December fills in. By the last week, the tree is visibly stuffed, and pages stick out at angles like it has been reading in bed.

January 6 and Everything After

On Twelfth Night, the tree comes down. It takes about an hour, mostly because everyone stops to read.

The cards get pulled, sorted, and scanned into a three-ring binder labeled The Book Tree, which lives in the local history collection. Volume 15 gets added in January 2027.

The books go three places. The best of the lot head to the Friends of the Library used book sale. The mangled ones go to the collage and craft bin in Meeting Room B, where they get cut up by people making worse art on purpose. The truly gone ones go to recycling.

Before any of them leave, each gets one rubber stamp inside the front cover: I WAS A BRANCH. For the first two weeks of January, an adoption table sits by the front door, and patrons are welcome to take one home. Rules: one per person, and no, you cannot take six because they match.

Adding Your Branch in 2026

Here is the practical part.

• Memory cards are available at the circulation desk starting Monday, November 16, 2026. Blank cards and pens are also in the basket by the newspaper rack.
• The tree goes up Friday, December 4, 2026, and stays up through Wednesday, January 6, 2027.
• Cards are accepted through Saturday, December 26, 2026, so staff has time to tuck them before the dismantling.
• Write on one side only, keep it legible, and use first names if you use names at all. You are welcome to leave it unsigned.
• One card per person per year. This is enforced gently and then firmly.
• If you would rather not write by hand, staff will take a typed card and print it for you. Ask at the desk.

Why We Keep Doing It

A library is in the business of things being used. We are less comfortable with the idea of things being used up. The Book Tree is a small annual argument that a book with a broken spine can still do one last job — holding somebody's sentence about their mother.

Come see it in December. Read a few cards if the pages are open. Then go home and think about what you would write.