TRAVELING LIBRARY

Opening Horizons With Every Turn of the Page

Through books, the traveling librarians connect with local children, adolescents, families, and seniors, exploring themes that foster leadership, critical thinking, empathy, inclusion, and literacy. 

Books are scarce in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, and the opportunity to learn to read or be read to is rare. Many schools and most homes have no books at all.

Every day, traveling librarians fill a bag with books from the Puerta Abierta School Library and travel to rural villages outside of Santiago Atitlán on the back of a local transport pick-up truck.

During classroom visits, librarians model creative teaching techniques by reading out loud, coordinating a thematically related art project, facilitating individual reading, and leading light-hearted interactive singing with the students and teachers.

Teens participate in book clubs, reading and talking about a featured book. Book themes are carefully chosen by the librarians to include a variety of complex social, cultural, moral, spiritual, and political issues that invite thoughtful sharing and animated debates among the teens and librarians.

The library also visits a local senior center. Many of the seniors never learned to read or had the opportunity to create art for their own pleasure. The Traveling Library applies the same learning techniques and exercises used with the children.

The Puerta Abierta Library books are also generously shared through open story hours, both in-person and online, and lent to families for home reading.

The Traveling Library Open Books program is multiplying its reach in the community.

Recently they shared their teaching curriculum with more than thirty teachers from schools, organizations, and libraries working with children and adolescents throughout Guatemala.

Guided by the curriculum, they help the teachers practice storytelling techniques, including the importance of book selection, preparing open-ended questions, and organizing creative activities that integrate the book themes that are shared during the interactive literacy sessions. The librarians also produce videos that are available on local cable and TV stations.