Araba Maze Image Source: Storybookmaze Project/YouTube
Araba Maze noticed neighborhood kids gathering around her as she read children’s books to her niece on her front stoop. As she wrapped up storytelling, one of the kids asked, “When are you gonna do this again?”
She later made it an everyday occurrence to have storytime readings with the neighborhood kids, and eventually became a librarian.
But she noticed that things felt different on the job: “After I was a librarian, I realized that I wasn’t reaching those same kids in my neighborhood inside the library.”
Maze took to the streets, becoming a “Radical Street Librarian” and the creator of The Storybook Maze Project, an organization that’s working to provide children’s books via community bookshelves, free pop-up book stands and book-vending machines to Baltimore neighborhoods classified as “book deserts.” Maze is one of many people and organizations trying to bring more equity to Baltimore in the form of diverse and relatable books to children and students in need of a read.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
