During an informative meeting of Filgua 2025, That it will be held in Guatemala City from Tuesday 1 to Sunday, July 13, it was reported that this year it was possible to create a circulation of 20 thousand books so that children attending public schools also receive a gift that brings them closer to reading and that goes beyond the different activities dedicated to school tours.
Diana López, director of the Guatemala Editors Association (AGEG)an entity organized by Filgua, shares that for years there has been the desire that all children leave the fair with a book in hand, this had been achieved in a certain percentage for support of a private company. However, an extension of the budget of Q2 to Q5 million of Quetzales has allowed to strengthen the fair, take it to the interior of the country and have a book that is being worked professionally so that children of public schools receive a copy.
There is a record that the fair attends about 23 thousand children, 15 thousand of them are public schools the books that remain will be distributed in schools within the fairs that AGEG organizes in the interior of the country.
“Apart from the cultural agenda, this fact moves our hearts as editors … This represents for us to go for a country of readers,” says López.
The book Rain legendsabout myths and legends, has as compilers Gloria Hernández, National Prize for Literature 2022, already Frieda Morales, doctor in letters, specialist in children’s and youth literature and reading practices. The illustrations are from Jasmine Villagrán Miguel, illustrator, graphic designer and plastic arts teacher, who has been included in the Ibero -American Illustrators Dictionary (SM, 2013) and in the catalog 25 Boislava illustration well (2015), which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the BIB.
López comments that, usually, children who arrive with their parents on the weekend have the privilege of buying them a book or several, but most of those who arrive from school can only be part of the activities and do not have money to acquire any. “Sometimes they say: do you know, what book does you have of Q5?, And perhaps the cheapest are Q20 … those children who go out without books are those who are interested in arriving with this project,” he adds.
For its part, César Medina, vice president of the AGEG Board of Directors, says they expect this to be the first year and repeat the process, in a way of making a Library of Filgua. The search is that books have literary quality.
“Literary orphanhood” for the children of Central America
The reflection on the difficulties that children face to approach literature was also an issue that developed in the past Central America countswhere writers and journalists from the region participated.
How did our Central American writers begin their love for literature? Everyone will have their own experiences of how a book came to them for the first time.
The creators of children’s books: Julio Serrano and Gloria Hernándezfrom Guatemala, and Jorge Galán, from El Salvadorparticipated in a conversation where they shared how they have worked the creation of books and other experiences they have had in bringing their stories to the new generations.
Writers agree on difficulties in the region to access literature. Few could imagine that there were no books at home during childhood in Julio Serrano. Quetzalteco, visual artist and writer of Two heads to put a goalhe obtained with this story mention of honor in the third Central American prize for children’s literature; and with Balam, rain and the housewon the Pen Translate Award of the English club and was a finalist at the awards Clippa and The Week Junior Awardand nominated for Yoto Carnegie Medal In illustration, all in the United Kingdom.
I arrived at poetry for my grandmother’s boleros and my grandfather; My mother sang us and my dad, who worked in agriculture, a tremendous oral narrator … that combination of bolero and oral tradition made me very early start playing with the words, says Serrano. Just at age nine, in front of a typewriter, he had his first crisis: he wanted to write, but the words did not arrive that time.
For the National Literature Award, Gloria Hernández, the process was not so different: there were not many books at home. His dad was his first literary supplier: “If you have necessarily boasting the origin with the books, mine was in shortage,” he said.
In one of his dad’s work he went to Quetzaltenango. There he met the evangelical bookstore, which brought texts of all kinds. “It was a very well mounted bookstore, and then there bought me just about three, four books that had to achieve for all the first years of reading,” Hernández said in his speech. In his childhood, for health reasons, he did not walk early, so he had time for introspection and ensures that those few copies that he mentioned helped him even develop literary criticism.
To the activity, Hernández brought his childhood books: Arabian Nights and Alice in Wonderland. Both show the passage of time with loose leaves and the evidence of the great use that has been given to them. In the first one he even has notes with his letter in the letter of the school days: “I want to go to Baghdad, to Persia and the Mecca … I found the sailor, the magical ring, more or less.”
Hernández is also a university professor in the areas of Spanish, literature and philosophy; Member of the Guatemalan Academy of Language; She graduated as a degree in Letters at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala and obtained a master’s degree in Hispanic American literature at Rafael Landívar University. His literary walk has been wide: he has 27 books published in the genres of poetry, essay, story and literature for children, including Patitos in a row and Susana storms.
Galán says that during his childhood it was the era of civil war and everything was complex. “There were no books in my house, just painting, because my grandmother liked to paint, and that kind of books is a taste that I still have left,” says the Salvadoran. He remembers his grandfather telling him stories: “At that age one believes everything, and he, as he traveled a lot, told us about a confrontation with Honduras, when he saw a submarine, and the legend of the Siguanaba.”
The Salvadoran author arrived at age 15, and it was with a book by Agatha Christie, The murder of Roger Ackroydwhich began to hook himself with literature. A program called Fiction Express In El Salvador it has shown that this reality of not reading continues to be for many children and young people.
More reading
Galán recalled that there was a program called Fiction Express, which showed that this reality – deficile access to books – remains present in Salvadoran children. This program published books for different levels of reading. In addition, it allowed communication between students and authors. “Some students said it was the first time they read and were excited about that; it emerged diversity of questions. It was moving,” Galán shared, who said this shows that “childhood is in the literary orphanhood.”
Serrano insists on the need for adults to accompany children through expression games to foster an encounter with letters. Hernández mentioned the indispensable thing to see literature as something serious: “Literature is the most serious game, but also the most rational.” The Guatemalan writer invites parents to read with children, and writers, to explore this genre with professionalism. The three authors propose that children’s literature should be free and should not always have moral education. It is also valid to offer books that allow children to enjoy reading and addressing various real life issues.