The librarians around the country who serve Latinos and the Spanish-speaking have an organization that’s a very diverse organization. It’s not all Latino librarians, but they’re librarians who are very committed to really being effective professionals for Latinos of all ages. It’s a group called REFORMA, an affiliate of the American Library Association. They decided that April 30th would be a good day for all of us to celebrate El día del niño/El día del libro Children’s Day/Book Day. And it has been really exciting to see it ripple out.
I see schools and libraries that start planning a year in advance for what they’re going to do. I always say it’s not just a one-day event. It is the day in which we celebrate all across the country the hard, but joyful, work of a year of linking all children to books, languages and cultures.
One of my dreams is to see those words “El día de los niños/El día de los libros” translated into all the languages spoken in the United States. So, I always say to librarians, “If your service population is a Vietnamese population, put those words in Vietnamese.”
In the pueblos here in the Southwest, I know that some of them have been involved in taking some time on April 30th to make culture boxes, and to think about their own culture and what they celebrate about it, and to write their own books, to draw their own books. I have known of places where they have author day on April 30th, and students autograph their own books. I mean there are all kinds of ways that we can help them to celebrate language, but also help them celebrate languages.
So, there’s a lot of information on the web about this. And my hope is that if this is taking place in your community, that you’ll be involved. But if it’s not taking place in your community, that you will chat with a library. It could be a school. It could be a social service agency that is excited about this endeavor.
There is some information on my website at www.patmora.com (opens in a new window). And there are links to the REFORMA web site, the librarians’. There are many ideas there. The Association of Library Services for Children has produced a brochure. There’s a link to that. And the brochure is available in English, but it’s also now going to be available in Spanish.
The Texas Library Association is going to be producing a website within the next year that will include a poster and bookmark and toolkit. The American Library Association also has an El día de los niños/El día de los libros poster and bookmark that can be ordered.
