A Lego set that has been gathering dust in a Whakatāne family's garage has been donated to the library.

The Davies family say they have no room to display the set at home and hope other families will enjoy seeing it while visiting the library,

It is a Lego Creator set from 2018 called “Roller Coaster”, made from over 4120 bricks with carts that move along the track. It stands 54 centimetres high and is 88cm wide.

The set is missing its mechanism to make the roller coaster move, but donator Steph Davies hopes that someone will have the necessary piece to make it go again.

She thinks it would be great if there was a button that children could push to make the coaster light up and go around a few times.

When the family went to donate the set, they found it in pieces, so had to find the instructions and rebuild it, which took them six months of on-and-off work.

Ms Davies was an essential worker during Covid and struggled after leaving her job because of the pandemic.

"Lego was the thing I turned to, to kind of to rebuild myself,” she said.

She hopes the hobby can help others in the same way.

She said her children had started to get into Lego and had lots of the Woolworths farm building bricks. They helped every now and then with the rebuilding of the roller coaster.

Ms Davies said if she were a millionaire, she would open a shop where people could look at and play with Lego.

She believes building with Lego is an important part of childhood and some children miss out on the opportunity, especially now with screens and the price of Lego.

Whakatāne Library appreciates the roller coaster donation and has displayed it on top of the magazine stand near the entry.

"Kids love to look at the Lego when they come in," said library collections lead Sarah Holmes-Reid.

She said having a permanent Lego structure was great because it sparked conversations about Lego Legends, the library’s Wednesday after-school programme which allows children to build Lego and tell stories through their creations.

The library welcomes any donations of Lego in good condition.