From childhood, we play at building houses with cushions, blankets, or cardboard boxes. Size and materials don't matter: a house can be any place where we feel safe, where we can imagine, create, and be.

In the Laboratory of Letters and Images: The House, we explored the profound meaning this symbol holds in childhood. Through stories, images, and play spaces, we discovered that a house is not just a roof or walls, but also an emotional place: a refuge, a starting point, a home.

This laboratory was an invitation to look at the house with fresh eyes, through art, play, and children's literature. The house in children's play is a symbol with multiple and profound meanings, ranging from security and refuge to autonomy and creative projection. It represents both a physical place and an emotional space, providing children with a vehicle to explore their inner world and the environment surrounding them.

Are you looking for a different and exciting way to enjoy reading? Books in a box are a unique proposal that goes beyond traditional pages. Presented on cards or loose sheets inside a box, these books invite you to interact, shuffle, and reinvent stories, opening the doors to imagination and creativity.

Today I bring you a selection of very peculiar books. These are books that are not bound in the usual way, but are presented inside a box, generally in the form of cards or independent sheets with which the reader can interact by ordering and shuffling the images to invent stories.

They are flexible books that invite us to creativity, to share stories aloud, to "hack" their initial reading proposal to invent other ways of reading.

In this new story laboratory we are going to see infinite books precisely to understand the concept of "infinity," through books and Art.

Infinity is a complex idea. Explaining it can be quite a challenge, but at the same time, infinity is an idea that holds a certain magic and mystery which makes trying to understand it irresistible to us.

To explore infinity we approach our story library, where we always find answers. After spending some time looking at and reading books we have learned some things.

Today we discover a type of game-book known as Mix and Match books. These books have their pages divided into different parts or sections, with images or texts that can be mixed and combined to create different visual or textual compositions.

These are books that awaken our creativity and imagination, playing with chance, with the absurd, and with the unexpected.

"Les Souffleurs, poetic commandos" is a collective of artists and poets of Franco-Japanese origin, known for their street poetic actions.

Dressed in elegant black, with an umbrella in hand and equipped with devices called WHISPERERS, the poetic commandos share poems in hushed tones whispered into the ears of people they encounter on the street. Through this action, they reclaim public space, creating intimate moments, pausing the hustle and bustle of passersby. They practice art in opposition to entertainment.

This is a reading promotion activity through art and play, which we carry out in the MACA Library in Alicante, led by María Maraña and Va de cuentos.

We offer you a proposal adapted to the online format, for those families who cannot attend in person. This month of October we celebrate the night of the deceased with this workshop dedicated to some of the most mythical characters of this celebration. We present you with some readings and creative proposals to play with mystery and magic. We begin with the witches.

This is a reading promotion activity through art and play, which we carry out in the MACA Library in Alicante, led by María Maraña and Va de cuentos. We offer you a proposal adapted to the online format, for those families who cannot attend in person. Today we discover books with holes or die-cut pages.

A hole in a book provokes curiosity and surprise in us, it is a path to the next page, it is a game. What could be on the other side?

Let's play hide and seek!

We are going to discover what is hidden in a hole.

This is a reading promotion activity through art and play, which we carry out in the MACA Library in Alicante, led by María Maraña and Va de cuentos. We offer you a proposal adapted to the online format, for those families who cannot attend in person. In this workshop I want to tell you about watercolor, one of the most used techniques in illustration. I bring you some illustrated albums with watercolors and some books that explain tricks and tips to us.

Finally, we will see how to make our own watercolors and become color alchemists!.

This is a reading promotion activity through art and play, which we carry out in the MACA Library in Alicante, led by María Maraña and Va de cuentos. We offer you a proposal adapted to the online format, for those families who cannot attend in person.

The forest is a common setting in children's literature. The forest as a place of adventure, as a labyrinth, or as a hiding place.

In this laboratory we discover the forest as a complex and wonderful living being that feels, communicates and cooperates. It is not just a setting, but also a main character.

Through some informative picture books we will discover that sometimes science releases enough magic to feed our imagination.

This is a reading promotion activity through art and play, which we carry out in the MACA Library in Alicante, led by María Maraña and Va de cuentos. We offer you a proposal adapted to the online format, for those families who cannot attend in person.

Today we are going to travel back to remote times to meet dinosaurs, mammoths and cave art.

And we are going to do it by following the trail of TRACES OF THE PAST.

We know that a trace is a mark left on the ground by an animal or person when stepping. Although other things can also leave traces, such as the wheel of a bicycle or a car.

Traces can give us clues if we know how to look at them.

For example, when we see animal traces in the mud, we will know that it passed by there a short time ago. If we pay attention to its shape, we will be able to find out how big it is or whether it is a mammal or a bird.