ABOVE: The catalog shows some people available for conversations during Living Library sessions, which ran for two weeks in July. BELOW: From left are Kianna Muckle, Lantana library assistant and project coordinator; Shari Boochay, who discussed her life as an immigrant; Linda Rosen, author; Kelsey Hamm, polyamory/nonbinary; Sara Garcia, dance teacher; Darcy Gordon, bipolar disorder; Glenn Mendez, on ’The Trajectory of Life’; Lisa Keough, guidance counselor; Kristine Kreidler, library director and organ transplant recipient; Sarsy Nix, ’Life is Full of Surprises’; Quanteria Jones, ’An Untraditional Life’; Raquel King, flight attendant and author. Photos by Tim Stepien/ The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
At the Lantana Public Library, books can be checked out for two weeks.
If it’s a very long book, or you’re a very slow reader, you can renew it for another two weeks. You can renew it up to five times, if no one else is waiting for it.
And for two weeks in July, you could have checked out an actual human being.
But only for 30 minutes.
“We’re trying to foster connection,” explained Kristine Kreidler, the library’s director, “and a library is the perfect place to get people off their phones and having face-to-face conversations.”
They called the program a Living Library.
“The concept began in Europe about 20 years ago,” says Kianna Muckle, the library assistant who organized the event along with Kreidler. “Over there, they call it the Human Library.”
Lantana’s Living Library is a glorified, and glorious, metaphor.
People with interesting professions or unusual lives volunteer to be “books” visitors can “check out” for 30-minute conversations.
Kreidler and Muckle reached out on Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites, and gathered 17 locals who agreed to sit in the library’s study room in two-hour shifts, chatting with any visitors who dropped by.
This was the first time the Lantana library added human beings to its collection. When the Living Library opened for business on July 20, the collection of human books included an adoptee, a flight attendant, a dancer, a person who identifies as nonbinary, a school guidance counselor and, among others, a woman who is breathing with somebody else’s lungs in her chest.
Here’s what some of them had to share.
Jennifer Troyan, 52, an adoptee
My parents were on a list for eight years, and I was adopted at a couple months old, through Catholic Charities. And three years later, I got a half-brother. They got him at 2½ days.
We always knew. My mother told us that giving up a child for adoption is one of the most selfless things anyone can do.
We got a piece of paper with just the mother and father’s age.
There’s no real medical history, so on forms it just says “Unknown.” That doesn’t bother me. Not knowing means it never put a preconceived notion in my head. I’ve had friends who knew there was a family history of heart disease, for example, and they would ruminate on that.
About 10 years ago, I joined ancestry.com and it said I was mostly Irish and Scottish. And 1% Mongolian. Whatever that means!
I debated about finding my birth parents. I sat for three years with a lot of soul searching. What if this or that happened?
Eight years ago, I hired a small boutique firm in California called Birth Parent Finder, and a parent/child connection popped up.
Her name’s Debbie. She’s 72, and local, and she wanted to meet me.
We met at a Starbucks in Lake Worth Beach on Aug. 8, 2018. I have a half-brother who’s 44, and a half-sister 10 years younger than me.
I told Debbie, “I can’t call you Mom.” So, I call her Debbie, or Amma, which is a South Indian dialect for, like, Mama.
She told me she was 19 and it was a two-night stand.
My birth father never even knew about me, but Birth Finder hired a genetic genealogy investigator, and they reached out to one of his daughters, who agreed to supply a DNA sample to confirm.
His name is David. He’s 80 and lives in Alabama. He was in denial. His daughter told him, “She’s not looking for a kidney.” We’ve had no contact, and I’m OK with that, but I did meet one of his daughters, and she’s also named Jennifer.
I was out of town this Aug. 8, so Debbie and I met again on Aug. 5 at the same Starbucks to mark the eighth anniversary of our first meeting.
My mother’s 86 now, and she was always good with me finding my biological mother. I told Debbie, “You gave my mother something she couldn’t have herself.”
Raquel King, 40, a flight attendant for 10 years with American Airlines
My favorite layover is Buenos Aires, and domestically New Orleans.
I’m not afraid of flying, but I am afraid of angry passengers. People get mad when there are delays or their flights are canceled. Maybe they’ve had too much to drink, or they took something because they’re a nervous flier. Sometimes people just need to vent.
I tell people flying is safer than driving. It’s safer than crossing the street. The only mode of transportation that’s safer than flying is an elevator.
Is there really a Mile High Club? Well, I haven’t caught anyone personally. But I have heard stories.
Sara Garcia, 23, a dance teacher at Boynton Beach School of Music, Dance and Drama
I started dancing at 3, then studied at Nazareth University in upstate New York and the University of Roehampton in England.
I teach combination ballet and tap classes to the school’s Little Learners, ages 3-8.
It’s very cute. There’s a lot of stomping. With ages 3-8, there’s a lot of surprising talent if they really have a passion for it. By about age 6, they’ll start asking for more styles and training.
Dancing classes are expensive outside a school. It can cost up to $500 a month, so after I pay off all my student loans, I want to work toward opening my own studio with more affordable and scholarship classes.
Darcy Gordon (center, with long braid) discusses her experiences with bipolar disorder during a Living Library session in Lantana.
Kelsey Hamm, 31, who describe themselves as polyamorous and nonbinary
I use they/them pronouns.
I have two boyfriends and a girlfriend, all long-term. I’ve been with the two men for three years and the woman for one year.
I was asked if I would have been happy if I had been trans as a child, but I had no gender dysphoria as a child. Growing up, I dressed very masculine. Sometimes I think of myself as more male than female.
I have considered hormones and surgery, but ultimately, I’m satisfied now.
I try to be out where I can, because I think visibility is important, but I can tell friends, “I’m not out in this situation,” and they respect that.
There’s a bar I go to locally, and even though they’re very confused about me, they’re also very nice.
Do we have orgies? Well, no one asked, but the answer’s no.
Lisa Keough, a guidance counselor at Forest Hill High School
I’ve been doing this for 33 years. I began in 1994 at Palm Beach Gardens High School, then worked with alternative education in the county jail and the Department of Juvenile Justice.
I love high school. The kids are interesting and they can reason, so a lot of it is helping them manage with parents, social media, their teachers.
The undocumented kids confide in me they’re afraid to come to school. We get them through school, but then they can’t afford college. One girl’s got straight A’s, and we got her a small scholarship through women’s clubs and service clubs, but only for one semester. She wants to be a nurse, but now she’s just working in a little restaurant.
And I had a young Guatemalan girl last year who was raped by her first cousin. I had to report it. He went to jail, but the females in her family, her mother and grandmother, wanted her to not press charges.
She was 17.
It’s important to be accepting and have no agenda of your own. Be open. Every teacher has their subject, and my subject is teaching kids how to be good decision-makers.
Kristine Kreidler, 45, a double-lung transplant and the library director
I don’t tell this too often.
I was born with cystic fibrosis, and by age 22 my lungs were at the end of life. In 2005, I went to Duke University, which is known as a great center, and got on a waiting list.
People wanted to know about the donor.
All I know about my donor is that he was 22 and from New York City, and he died on Memorial Day weekend of 2005. At that age, it’s typically an accident or an overdose.
My surgery was on Memorial Day as well. They called me around 8:30 p.m. on the 29th saying they had a potential set of lungs.
Was I terrified? Yes and no. On the morning of my surgery, my mom called and told me The Palm Beach Post had an article that morning about Joan of Arc. I had played Joan of Arc in a play at Palm Beach State College, and there was a quote from her, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
The surgery took between seven and nine hours. I don’t know exactly how long, but when I came to, the ICU nurse was holding a Diet Dr Pepper. I don’t like diet drinks, or Dr Pepper.
I was on a ventilator for the first two or three hours, and then they took the vent out, and I was in the hospital for six days.
The median survival rate after a transplant is 50% at five years and 20% at 10 years. I’m still here after 21 years.
My doctor says long-term survivors like me are in uncharted territory.
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During the 10 days of the Living Library’s human books program, 64 visitors “checked out” a book.
“Many attendees stayed well beyond the scheduled check-out period and ultimately befriended one another,” Kreidler said. “That's the best kind of outcome we could hope for.
“We definitely plan to try again next year, tweaking it from what we learned and promoting it earlier and more often. When attendees stay long after a program ends and leave having formed new friendships, that tells us we are creating exactly the kind of community connection libraries are uniquely positioned to foster.”
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A small-town library with impressive growth
Kristine Kreidler, Lantana library director and organ transplant recipient, holds a customized wooden book given to each Living Library participant.
By Ron Hayes
When Kristine Kreidler became the director of the Lantana Public Library in 2019, it had one full-time employee — and she was it.
Today, there are four, plus seven part-timers.
Under her leadership, the library has seen the kind of growth that more than justifies those additional staff members.
For example, Kreidler reports, in the 2018-19 fiscal year, the library issued 264 library cards to new borrowers. In 2024-25, they issued 1,845 new cards.
That’s a 599% increase in six years.
Over the same period, the library has seen a 160% increase in annual circulation, from 12,014 books checked out in the fiscal year before she started to 31,189 in 2025. And this is at a library that doesn’t have DVDs. All those checkouts were for books.
The library has gone from offering 11 programs right before Kreidler arrived to 426 in 2025. And those programs have brought in many more people, from the 97 who showed up back in the fiscal year prior to Kreidler’s start to the 8,740 who attended in 2025.
“Our mission is to educate and provide a safe, welcoming space, but it goes deeper than that,” Kreidler says. “Beyond books, we want to cultivate community, the kind that happens face-to-face and results in neighbors knowing each other as they used to back in the old days.
“We want to be the vibrant hub of Lantana that residents are proud of.”
To find out all the Lantana Public Library has to offer, visit lantanalibrary.org.
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