Here’s how you can help the Barrio Bookmobile
The Barrio Bookmobile aims to make reading accessible for everyone in the Valley. But to keep giving out books, they need your help.
PHOENIX — Richard Gonzales remembers going to his local recreation center in the summer as a kid back in the 70s. As a lifelong bookworm, he remembers his excitement whenever the bookmobile would make a visit to the rec center.
He would look all around the book mobile, searching through the brand-new books and trying to pick just the right one to take home.
“I never forgot that feeling and that excitement,” Gonzales said.
Decades later, that feeling and excitement are what Gonzales hopes to bring to metro Phoenix communities through his very own bookmobile: The Barrio Bookmobile.
“It was something that I always thought ‘wow, that would be so cool to go around, go to schools in my bus full of books, and just give away books to kids,'” Gonzales said. “And give them that same excitement that I felt when I was a kid.”
The Barrio Bookmobile, which is the central program of the non-profit Hadley Street Foundation for Education, started in 2017, and it actually wasn’t a bookmobile at all: it began with volunteers bringing boxes and stacks of books to events, handing them out free of charge to kids from preschool to teenagers who stopped by.
“My favorite thing about the bookmobile is getting to play librarian and help the kids find just the perfect book for them,” Gonzales said.
In 2022, Gonzales found a used bookmobile for sale in New Mexico, and since then, he has taken the Barrio Bookmobile to festivals like the Día de los Muertos festival hosted by the Cultural Coalition, as well as to classrooms and rec centers, just like the bookmobile he grew up with did.
“Lots of times, the kids have never seen a bookmobile; they have no idea what it is,” Gonzales said. “When they first come in, that’s when it hits them—the same way it hit me when I was a kid—they come in and they see shelves and shelves full of books, and they’re just in awe.”
The Barrio Bookmobile is completely free for community members, something that is very important to Gonzales. There is no charge to kids who get a book, no fee for teachers or schools inviting the bookmobile to the classroom, and no cost for organizations who ask the Barrio Bookmobile to attend their events.
All of the books are donated by friends, family, authors, and community members.
“A lot of people nowadays, they think, ‘oh well, the kids, they’re just… all they want to do is be on their phones, they will just want to be on their tablets, they’re just always on their screens. It’s always screen time,” Gonzales said. “But I’ve found by going out to events, going out to the schools, when the kids come in and they see the books, they’re excited and they’re excited to walk out with an actual physical book.”
But keeping the bookmobile up and running costs money: Gonzales says the bookmobile has incurred more than $20,000 in repairs in the last year alone, and to travel from place to place, the bookmobile requires fuel, something else that needs to be paid for.
Gonzales also said his next goal for the Barrio Bookmobile is to install air conditioning. Right now, the bookmobile can only attend events during the cooler months. But Gonzales says he wants the Barrio Bookmobile to serve kids during the hot summer months, too—especially since many children don’t have the same access to books over the summer that they do during the school year.
That’s why Gonzales is so passionate about keeping the bookmobile up and running.
“We don’t know which book it is that’s going to speak to a child, and what book it is that’s going to flip that switch,” Gonzales said. “This is kind of a Johnny Appleseed approach, we kind of just go out there having faith that some kid out there who comes to our bookmobile will find just the right book and become a lifelong reader just from that one book that they picked from the bookmobile.”