My Name is Gabito

Once, there was a little boy named Gabito who could. This little boy would become one of the greatest storytellers of all time.

Gabito was born in the magical town of Aracataca, Colombia, and his imagination was just as big and great and wild as the thickest jungles and highest mountaintops of Colombia.

To Gabito, the world was a magical place. He grew up in a little house with his big family and, according to his grandmother, a strange and mysterious ghost. Sometimes little Gabito would imagine the ghostlady gliding through his house and rocking the empty rocking chair in the family room. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Gabito never sat in that rocking chair because he didn’t want to squish the ghost.

Gabito’s imagination was big.

Gabito also lived with an amazing 100-year-old talking parrot named Lorenzo the Magnificent. Lorenzo would make up stories of his own, just like Gabito. And sometimes his stories turned out to be true!

One day Gabito listened to Lorenzo tell a story about a big, angry bull getting loose. Imagine his surprise when a big, angry bull ran right through his kitchen! Maybe, thought Gabito, Lorenzo the Magnificent had magical powers.

Gabito’s imagination was wild.

Gabito’s favorite person in the whole world was his grandfather Nicolas, who had a giant dictionary filled with many amazing words. From this dictionary, Gabito learned that magic is not just for witches, that gypsies are wanderers with a taste for adventure, and that words can be big and great and wild, too.

The more words Gabito learned, the more stories he told.

Each day after breakfast, Gabito and his grandfather put on matching Scotch plaid hats and walked through the town of Aracataca, holding hands and smelling the jasmine flowers. The two of them would walk happily towards the café, where they met his grandfather’s friends for lunch. His grandfather always let him dip his hands into the pitcher of water and lift out the cold and crunchy ice cubes.

The more people Gabito met, the more stories he told.

Sometimes Gabito and his grandfather walked past the big banana plantation at the edge of town. He saw how hard the people on the banana plantation worked picking fruit. Even to little Gabito, it didn’t seem fair that those who worked so hard were so poor, and this made Gabito sad. He tried to imagine a world where no one was poor and where everyone could sit with their grandfathers under the shade of a tree, holding hands and crunching ice.

The more things Gabito saw, the more stories he told.

Under the hot sun, Gabito grew tall. He learned that ghosts were real, that parrots sometimes speak the truth, and that not everything, even in this magical world, is fair. Most importantly he learned that he loved stories. He loved hearing them, reading them, telling them, and writing them. He loved creating worlds where the impossible was possible, where dreams were true, and where people could float and fly.

The more stories he wrote, the more he wanted to write.