Luis Soriano is a modern-day, one-man version of the Packhorse Librarians. He is a teacher in Columbia and twice a week he loads his two burros with books, grabs his biblioburro sign, and rides for 8 hours round-trip to bring books to rural children near la Gloria, Columbia.
Watch as Luis tells his story
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuTswmx9TQU
An update to Luis’ story
Donations received after that first video was posted have paid for a new library next door to Luis’ house! See the update here:
PBS released an hour-long documentary about Luis in 2011. More information about that can be found here. Luis Soriano was chosen by CNN as one of their Heroes of the Year in 2010.
2018 Update to the story
For some reason, when I first started researching this story, I could only find older information. Today I found a recent BBC video that gives us an update to the story. Luis lost a leg in an accident a few years ago and now has a prosthetic leg. He continues to ride and deliver books but has also been able to expand his range with other biblioburro volunteers. The biblioburro has been running for 21 years. Wow!
An inspiration
Luis Soriano’s story is quite inspirational. I was able to watch the PBS documentary on Amazon Prime Video and definitely recommend it. The short videos above give a nice look at what the project and the man are all about but the documentary really shows how hard and dangerous the work is and how dedicated he is to getting books to the children. The stories told by the children in the video are heart-breaking. The video is in Spanish with English subtitles so unless you understand Spanish, you’ll have to be paying attention and concentrating while you watch. No multi-tasking while watching this one!
This is the book that first introduced me to the Biblioburro story.
Watch the Book Trailer for Waiting for Biblioburro
Book Deserts
There are lots of places throughout the world, including the United States, that have limited access to books. Check out this great map provided by Unite Books to find a book desert near you then donate some books there. You can zoom in quite far and might be surprised at what you find!
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Websites visited:
- CNN Heroes
- Short documentary on Youtube in Spanish with English subtitles
- Updates to above documentary
- HDNet video about Luis’ biblioburro
- Book trailer for Waiting for the Biblioburro
- PBS Documentary information
- BBC Video with story updates, posted in 2018
- Learn about the book’s illustrator, John Parra
