On a hill behind a tree, there is a house.
In the house, there is a bed and on the bed
there is a little girl named Ana, fast asleep,
dreaming about the world outside and
beyond the hill.
Ana has to help her father and mother with the farm work. When it’s hot outside, she wishes she were back inside the cool house reading and rereading the one book she owns. It was a gift from her teacher, but her teacher has moved away and now there isn’t one in Ana’s village at all.
One day, a man comes to the village riding on a burro and leading another.
Both burros are laden with books, and he carries a sign that says, “Biblioburro.” He tells the children he is a librarian, a bibliotecario, and the books on the burros, Alfa and Beto, are his moving library.
The man reads a story to the village children and helps the littlest ones learn the abecedario. Then he tells them they can pick out books to keep until he comes back in a few weeks.
It feels to Ana like the librarian will never come back. She reads every day while she waits and, to pass the time, she writes a book for the librarian.
When he does come back, the librarian reads her book to the children. Then he packs up and heads for other places and other children who are anxiously waiting for his return.
The author, Monica Brown, gently sprinkles Spanish words throughout the story. She does it in a way that doesn’t distract readers by leaving them wondering what the words mean. She also doesn’t take the fun out of the story by making it feel like a Spanish lesson. There is a glossary of Spanish terms in the back, just in case.
This isn’t a story of some bygone time, but is a 21st century story of life in the countryside of Colombia. The best part is that the book was inspired by a real person, Luis Soriano Bohórquez. He is a teacher and a librarian dedicated to taking books to children in remote villages who would not otherwise have access to a library.
There is a link in the Author’s Note to a news story about this man. https://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/25/cnnheroes.soriano/. There are also several youtube videos about him, though most are in Spanish.
This book is available at amazon.com.
You can find out more about this book at biblioguides.com.