Biblioburro

[2] A primary school teacher by profession, Soriano developed the idea after witnessing first-hand the power reading had on his students, most of whom had lived through intense life conflicts at a young age.

[1] Soriano wrote to Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer, after having heard him read excerpts from his novel The Ballad of Maria Abdala on a radio program.

[3] Additional funding is also provided by the director of a community library, located nearly 180 miles (290 km) from the Caribbean shore in Santa Maria, who hired Soriano as a satellite employee in order to share a portion of its US $7,000 annual budget.

[2] In addition to encyclopedia volumes, novels, and medical texts, other items distributed by the Biblioburro include Horacio Quiroga's animal fable Anaconda, the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy (Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española) and a number of Time–Life travel pictorial books.

Books lost from the collection include a sex education manual and a copy of Laura Esquivel's 1989 novel Like Water for Chocolate, both of which were not returned by borrowers.