The trip of my lifetime
Abigail Janeth Saez Quinlli. El Coca, Ecuadorian Amazon
I don’t know exactly when I started my wonderful journey through the books. At one point I was full of papers, file folders and more files in my administrative work at the Archaeological Museum and Cultural Center of Orellana (MACCO-EP). I remember that it was a normal day in my work, until I went down to one of the cultural services spaces of the museum: the public library. And there I had my first encounter with a picturebook: Here We Are. Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers. Without a doubt, that was the first time I read a complete book, I couldn’t believe it, because to be honest, I was one of those readers who only read the front and back covers.
From that day on, I became interested in reading more and more, I’d leave the office as if to take a breath, and read children’s books, young adult books and picturebooks from the library. Since that day I have not stopped reading them and I have learned to share these readings with my nephews at home. It was also of great help that as an institution we had won the 8th call from Iberbibliotecas and precisely in this year 2021 we are carrying it out it. Thanks to this I learned a very interesting methodology: “Picnic of words”.
Now, being a mediator, I ask myself when I became one. I discovered this word this year, but the truth is that I had been one for several years, because I am a volunteer in a church where we work with children from the neighborhood or other communities, from 3 to 6 years old. There I help them with fine and gross motor skills, recreation activities and reading induction; perhaps not with precise methodologies because I was unaware of them, but I think that in a certain way I did mediate when I read aloud the various books and stories.
Every day is a challenge for me, this world of books has its ups and downs of emotions, research and creativity. Now I have a physical space and also a group of children who, when I say, “Kids, there is reading this weekend!”, one by one they come to check out the books and that is when I say to myself “You are doing well!” and my heart is filled with emotion and amazement because I have seen in each look of my children that curiosity about books, and they see a book as part of them; a book is no longer as distant.
My challenge continues and I hope to plant in each participant that love of reading; that they see that books are not boring as we have been taught, but instead magical worlds with which we can see ourselves and dream.