In his bestselling fantasy, “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” author TJ Klune cast a curmudgeonly garden gnome named Talia, a 263-year-old gal with a beard, a pointed red cap, and a fierce determination to protect her newfound family at an orphanage on Marsyas Island.
Little did we know Talia had a younger cousin in Tucson.
Meet the Tucson Tome Gnome, who arrived in 2021 and has since left more than 3,000 free books all over town.
One of the book drop locations around town over the five years Tucson Tome Gnome has been at it.
New books have appeared beneath murals, billboards and well-known local landmarks. We’ve found them leaning against beauty shops, bus stops and bars.
Most of these books mysteriously appear one Sunday a month, and while no one has actually laid eyes on the Tome Gnome himself, lots of us have come to believe he is real.
The generous little elf now has 6,800 followers on Instagram. Eight hundred more keep tabs on Facebook, and lots of us will be on the lookout when he begins making his rounds again on Sunday, Sept. 27.
People are also reading…
What says Tucson more than a local author's book being placed near a local icon for readers to find?
This one is special — it will mark the Tome Gnome’s fifth anniversary — and to celebrate the occasion he will be hiding a two-book package: “We Burned So Bright” by Klune and “Take Me with You” by Steven Rowley.
“Five years, who knew?” said Emily Walsh, one of the three local women who launched the Tome Gnome project and still manage it today. “I don’t think any of us had any idea it would catch on the way it has. Now it would be pretty hard to stop.”
The Tome Gnome introduced himself to the Tucson community on Sept. 12, 2021, leaving a free, gift-wrapped copy of Klune’s “Cerulean Sea” at 30 random locations throughout the valley.
Emily Walsh and Jody Hardy are among the three local women who launched the Tome Gnome project five years ago and still manage it today.
The next month it was “Mexican Gothic” by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, then “The City We Became” by N.K. Jemisin.
In the years since, the Tucson Tome Gnome project has matured into a fully accredited 501(c)3 public charity. Its mission, and you can look this up, “is spreading bookish happiness and kindness throughout Tucson, Arizona.”
Suffice it to say, Mission: Accomplished.
The concept was first put on the table, the dinner table, when Walsh, Jody Hardy and Mary Ellen Flynn got together one evening in July of 2021.
“It was our first night out in more than a year, since the start of the pandemic,” Walsh recalled. “We went to Zinburger, and one of the things we talked about was how much we missed our book club … and the people we saw there … and the community we’d found over books.”
At some point, Walsh wondered if it might be fun to create a new community by hiding books around town and then connecting with readers online.
“I think the way she pitched it to us was, ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if you just randomly found a great book out in the wild?’” Hardy said. “We thought she might be kidding, at first, but it sounded like a great idea. We were just starting to come out again after COVID. It seemed like a way to connect with people again without needing to connect, physically. Besides, it sounded like fun.”
It did not take long for people to notice.
One of them was Klune, a former Tucsonan who learned of the Tome Gnome in 2022 and immediately offered to help.
“We had started a GoFundMe page, and one morning I saw a pretty generous donation from someone named Travis Klune,” Walsh remembered, happily. “It took me a minute to realize who that was, but that’s where it began. A few weeks later, he reached out to ask if we could chat at the book festival, and he’s been part of this ever since.”
Beneath the fun of it all, beneath the ribbon and gift wrap and the gnome’s clever banter, the heart of the Tome Gnome program is “the book” … the title selected for the scavenger hunt each month.
“When we were first getting ourselves organized, we spent some real time thinking about the kind of stories we wanted to share,” Hardy said. “We decided we’d find books that encouraged inclusion, kindness, and diversity. We knew people would get some joy in finding a book. We wanted them to feel joy when they read it, too.”
If these qualities can be found in books by local authors, all the better.
The Tome Gnome’s gift list has included books by Tucsonans Jen DeLuca, Courtney Gustafson, L.L. Madrid, Jessica Pryde and Matt Dinniman.
Once the books are in hand, the Tome Gnome’s assistants gift-wrap each of them, including a note that encourages the recipients to share “shelfies” with the Tome Gnome community.
And on one Sunday a month, just as they have for five years now, Walsh and Hardy begin “hiding” books around Tucson.
“We always do it together, and kind of make a day of it,” Walsh said. “It takes awhile, since we usually have 30 books. We’re looking for public areas like parks and schools. New murals. Public art.”
Sometimes, the book itself tells them where they should go.
“In ‘Light from Uncommon Stars’ there was a a doughnut shop, so we tried to leave books at doughnut shops that month,” Walsh said. “The month we chose 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold,' we looked for coffee shops.”
Other times, the author may have a suggestion.
“Matt Dinniman suggested the old Lisa Frank Warehouse near the airport,” Walsh said. “He remembers going there growing up.”
The Tome Gnome makes it a point to visit small businesses every month, and being a small businessman himself, the gnome knows it is not all seashells and balloons.
Murals are among the locations books have been left as a surprise for Tucson readers to find.
“When we first started, we didn’t give much thought to things like insurance premiums and tax returns,” Hardy confessed. “It isn’t all fun stuff, but it’s never felt like a job. When we hear from people who find our books … and how much joy they got from reading it … we feel it, too. We still feel it, too.”
To learn more about the Tucson Tome Gnome, visit tucsontomegnome.com.
Footnotes
Tucson author Courtney Gustafson has agreed to serve as the Pima County Public Library’s Writer in Residence this fall. In addition to private coaching sessions, she will offer three public workshops at the Martha Cooper Library, the first being Sept. 19. To learn more, visit library.pima.gov/writer/.
Sept. 30 is the application deadline for self-published and independently published authors hoping to present their work at the 2027 Tucson Festival of Books. To learn more, visit tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.
The Copper Queen Library in Bisbee is one of 16 selected to be part of the Smithsonian Rural Library Cohort. The 12-month partnership will bring Bisbee free educational programming from the Smithsonian. To learn more, visit bisbeeaz.gov/2155/copper-queen-library.
