Gloucester City girl helps with providing free books to kids around Camden area

CAMDEN, N.J. - A local 10-year-old girl is helping to provide free books to kids around the Camden area

Nataly Colin spends a lot of her spare time tending to a book ark outside her Gloucester City home.

"Here you take a book and if you didn't like it you give it away or put it back in and take another one. It's simple," she told FOX 29's Shawnette Wilson.

It started one day when Nataly was at soccer practice in Camden. She noticed Tom Martin setting up a pop-up book table.

 "I went over and started grabbing books and then I started asking questions," she said. She says he explained a project he was doing to get kids interested in reading.

 "I took so many books I needed a bag,” she said.

Nataly became so interested in what Tom was doing that with her parents’ permission she agreed to let him put a book ark outside her home.

"Can you get that? You're pretty strong Nataly," said Tom when he dropped off more books today for her to refill the ark. Tom is the executive director of the Camden County Pop Up Library.

"I figured the best thing to do is just to bring books to where people are but they don't have access to books and give them away," he said. It’s a three-year idea that’s finally blossoming.

Tom started with pop-up book tables around Camden three days a week and has since expanded to book arks.

 "People take books and they don't have to return them," he said. Two months ago Tom gave Nataly a bunch of books to start one.

"She filled the books, she decorated it, she actually put lights around it and she put flyers all around the neighborhood," said Tom. Nataly was already a true book-worm. Her bedroom is stocked with books in every direction and her 8-year-old brother Ethan is into it, too. She hopes it catches on far and wide.

 "Someone from another place like from New York, for example, can have their book ark there. Then someone there it might spread over and then kids might want to start reading," said Nataly.

So far, there are seven around Camden.

For more information, please visit their website, here.  A Facebook page has also been set up.