This lends the entire story a dreamlike quality that is encouraged by John Parra‘s illustrations.

The lack of concrete place names mirrors the lack of proper names throughout the book the only named characters are Ana and the two burros, Alfa and Beto. The only mentions of Luis Soriano Bohórquez and Colombia are in the author’s note at the end of the book, easily overlooked. Not only is Soriano Bohórquez never named, but the story is never located in a town or even a country. She presents him with her book on his return, and he adds it to his library to share with children in another town.īrown’s book is striking in its omissions.

While waiting for the librarian to return, she makes a book that tells the story of the man with the biblioburros. Ana loves having more stories to read and tell to her brother.

He reads stories to the children and lends them all books. One day, a man comes through town with books loaded on his burros. A long-gone schoolteacher once gave her a book, which she treasures, but she craves more stories. audience.Īna, the protagonist of Waiting for the Biblioburro, lives in a remote farming town. Reviewed below.īoth books simplify Soriano Bohórquez’s life and mission, as one would expect, but a closer examination of each text shows the troubling degree to which essential details have been purged and sanitized for a U.S. See review.īiblioburro: A True Story from Colombia, by Jeanette Winter, follows Soriano Bohórquez through a day of trekking into the countryside and back with his library. Waiting for the Biblioburro, by Monica Brown, tells the story through the eyes of a little girl named Ana, whose town receives a visit from the Biblioburro. Despite these obstacles, he continues to promote literacy because he believes that it is key to ending violence and bringing peace to his country. Soriano Bohórquez’s courageous work is the inspiration for two recent children’s picture books, both published in English in the United States. In the course of his travels he has been threatened with violence, has been robbed, and has injured himself in a fall from his burro. Luis Humberto Soriano Bohórquez and his biblioburro. He and his wife have also built a library that serves more than 250 children in the area. For 10 years, Luis Humberto Soriano Bohórquez has gone from village to village reading to children, helping them with their homework, and lending books to anyone within burro distance. In the north of Colombia, in a rural area controlled mainly by paramilitaries, and still under threat of violence and repression, a former schoolteacher has outfitted his burros as a mobile lending library. In Colombia, internal conflict between paramilitaries and guerrilla groups ebbs and flows, exacerbated by political upheaval and the drug trade.

Waiting on the biblioburro