Storyteller entertains kids in Mexico City apartment complex

[July 19, 2020: ABC News]

Percibald Garcia recognized that confinement during the coronavirus lockdown is especially tedious for children. So the young architect decided to read them stories.

Almost every day since the beginning of May, the 27-year-old has gone out in an enormous Mexico City apartment complex with his “wandering microphone” to broadcast stories to children who gather at their windows to listen.

While most kids these days have cellphones, tablets or computers, Garcia wants them to hear the human voice and the world of shared tales. He also wants them to realize they can use, even from a distance, the public plazas that have served as the anchor of life in Mexico for centuries.

“We realized that almost nobody was looking after the way that kids were experiencing this lockdown,” Garcia said Saturday.

Setting up his microphone in one of the green spaces that sit between rows of apartment buildings, he read ”El Tlacuache Lunatico” (“The Crazy Opossum”). It’s a story by David Martín del Campo about a possum who suffers because he is so short. The possum tries to reach the moon to feel taller. Once there, he eats the moon — and then has to figure out, with fellow animals, how to bring it back. Other stories follow the same vein... MORE