![[Feature] AllWithBooks: Children's Books Inspired By A Mayan Community](https://cdn.blogarama.com/images/posts_thumbs_site_id/12821/1282093-1021979474.jpg "[Feature] AllWithBooks: Children's Books Inspired By A Mayan Community")
Reading is the foundation of education. Nevertheless, there are more than 100 million children around the world who don’t have access to books or who can’t read.
Here is the good news - AllWithBooks is a new social enterprise that creates children’s books with the help of people living in communities in need to build them libraries with every book set purchase.
Enrique, the co-founder of AllWithBooks, started to write short stories for his daughter about the places that he had been to. After writing those short stories he felt that there was more he could do for the communities he was writing about. For several days he thought about different ideas of what to give them in return, when he eventually came up with the idea of making and selling children’s book with these types of stories and then giving the communities books and building them libraries. He invited Phox, a friend and illustrator, and Sean, a former adjunct professor at a university, to join the team.
All You Need to Make Mayan Honey is a collection of 10 illustrative story books about the people from Katab, a Mayan Community in Mexico that harvests honey. Each story is inspired by true community stories, like Lina’s, who was the first woman to graduate from college in the Mayan community, or Victor, a farmer who forgot his harvest offerings and was punished by Chaac, the Mayan rain god. There’s also Mariana, a Mayan healer who travels to the stars, and Memo, the 10-year-old boy who discovered Katab. These are just a few examples of our stories.
The people from Katab are co-creators of the books and each book sale goes to a fund to help support any local educational project they choose. The first project identified is a library. The community will be donating land and labor, and the book sales will fund the construction materials, equipment, and books.
Customers not only support this project with their purchase, but they can get even more involved by helping to choose books for the library. Enrique explains that the idea is to also connect readers and have a cultural exchange, “You will view the world through a person in the Mayan community with one of our books, and they will view your world through your favorite book.”
The books are written and illustrated for early readers, such as children 4 years of age and up. Each hardcover book is 6x6 inches and is printed with soy ink on high-quality paper from responsible materials.
They are raising $20,000 through Kickstarter to print the first 1,000 book sets and to build the library in Katab. You can support this project and buy the 10 book set collection starting with the $20 early special.
Click here to support their Kickstarter.
If they succeed, they want to co-create more children’s books with more communities in need in the world until they make books available to every child in the world.
