Visiting the Piedra Santa bookstore was our first big group activity of the service trip. This Guatemala City pitstop was an essential part of our contribution to the Asturias school library. Although many of us did purchase Spanish books at home in the US or Canada, this was our chance to buy locally and choose from the latest selection of publications from the bookseller. We were excited to get started!

We spent our morning choosing titles for students from K-12, keeping a special eye out for graphic novels and recent publications. Last year’s librarians noticed an interest in graphic novels, especially among the middle school and high school grades. Not only did we find a number of graphic novels, we found an entire series of the book the Little Prince set in the future in graphic novel format! Here we are flipping through one of the titles.

We were excited to see this modern take on a classic, and hoped that these books, along with other fiction, non-fiction and graphic novel choices would be a great addition to the Asturias library.

We also got a great tour of the other spaces in the bookstore, which included learning about the equipment used by the booksellers for binding and printing of the books. We had access to publishers workspaces as well. It was a neat opportunity to get “behind the scenes.” The best part of it all? Our tour guide was the nine year old daughter of one of the employees! She was great!

Our next task will be sorting through all our purchases and getting them organized to be catalogued! But first check out some pictures of our trip participants with some of their favourites! Hasta Luego!