JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — In a small town in the northern Gaza Strip, a group of children sat on a circle of small chairs in front of a minibus, listening raptly to a storyteller. The bus had been turned into a mobile library to bring books into areas where there are none.
The mobile library’s coordinator, Mahmoud Askalani, told Al-Monitor that Ramallah’s French-German Cultural Center sent the bookmobile to Gaza on May 16. Its route takes it to marginalized areas and towns with no public libraries on a mission to encourage children to read. The bookmobile is expected to return to the West Bank by the end of August after completing its three-month tour. The mobile library, the first of its kind in the Gaza Strip, has already visited 40 neighborhoods across Gaza this year, targeting children under 14. This is the bookmobile's second trip across the Gaza Strip. Its first visit was in the summer of 2015.
The cultural center collaborated on the project with the Tamer Institute for Community Education and the Abdel Mohsin al-Qattan Foundation, both of which provided children’s books.
Aya al-Ajrami, 11, from Jabaliya, told Al-Monitor she was extremely pleased with the bookmobile’s visit to her hometown, adding that she had never been to a public library before. Aya’s father, Raed al-Ajrami, who accompanied his daughter to the mobile library, said though he has always told her bedtime stories, this was Aya's first chance to actually hold a storybook in her hands and read it herself.
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