As almost always, the matter began by chance. One day three years ago. When Araba Maze was reading a book to her nephew on the porch of her home in Baltimore. A couple of children from the nearby garden came over to listen. And another who was passing on the sidewalk, seeing the first ones, also stopped. And so on. At a certain point Araba Maze stopped, finding herself in front of a small crowd: “What are you doing there?”. “Let’s wait for the next story.” “Go read a book at home, it’s nice to read.” “There are no books in our house.” And for her, who didn’t know it yet, that day a career as a librarian and influencer began. She dedicated, under the name Storybook Maze (the photo above is taken from her Instagram profile), to the commitment to “put books in the hands of all the children in the city who do not have access to a library”.
Since then, in fact, this woman has started working in the library closest to her home, which is actually quite far away because there isn’t even one in her neighborhood. And she set her mission in motion in three ways. The first was a free book vending machine, installed with the funds raised thanks to a social popularity gained in a very short time. Then the opening of “temporary bookshops”, in the form of stalls in front of which she read stories to passing children: with over seven thousand books distributed in a few months. And now Storybook Maze is starting its most ambitious project: a “Book Train” that goes around the most suburban neighborhoods of Baltimore to give them to children. “If children can’t reach the books – writes Araba Maze – it means that the books will reach them. Even by train if necessary”.
